Most Significant Person of the 20th Century?

I know there have been polls and discussions about this in the past (not too sure about here at MoFo), so I thought since I'm seriously considering this stuff right now, I will offer it to the Community; who do you think and why? I considered putting up a poll, but I didn't want to suggest that the answer is something limited. I will not post my own thoughts as of yet for the same reasons that I didn't put up a poll. I mean, I could say Yogi Berra or Homer Simpson because they are duking it out as the "most quotable people" of the 20th century, but I'd like some serious answers. Please remember to support your choices. Pretend you're their campaign managers, and you win an obscene amount of money if your choice "wins".

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My IMDb page

Elton John...need I say more?

'kay, I will.

Sir E. John is the man, is he not. Gays love him, homophobes love him, I love him. His brother Daniel, yep, he loves him. Captain Kirk even took the time to cover his song. EJ is the man and is the knight of music. I love you EJ:

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“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

Of course you need.

Dammit Mark give me a few secs...

Take as long as you want. Let's see... so far we have Yogi Berra (sorry), Homer Simpson (sorry) and Elton John. I'll admit that they are all signicant, but that obscene amount of Monopoly money isn't coming to either of us anytime soon.

I don't have a list of everyone who lived during the 20th century in front of me, but if I had to pick someone off the top of my head, it would probably be Hitler. Kind of influenced the direction of the entire world, didn't he?

Or maybe it's Einstein.

Or maybe I'm just really tired and I can't back either of these choices up right now, so I'm gonna go to bed. Good night.

Now we're getting somewhere.

Well, I for once was serious.

I guess certain presidents, or even dictators could apply.

Charlie Wilson maybe, or even Bill Gates, or maybe Sam Walton.

But EJ is still my vote because well...I am a sap.

OK, Bubba, I'll "Let It Be".

Robert Oppenheimer

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Comment is free but facts are sacred

Very interesting topic mark, I'll throw out a few and I may be off the mark but I'm sure that will come as a surprise to no one.

For a significant person in the last 50 tears I would definitely go with Martin Cooper. He is the person for better or worse that is responsible for the fact that every single child from the age of about 6 and up now carries a Cell phone in their pocket. You can read all about him here.

I was 2 years old when he made his first call on his first portable phone and man... look at us now. What's of interest to me is how many aren't even using phones to "talk" to people anymore, now we text and download songs and watch television and movies and on and on and on.

When you consider how much these little devices are in the news these days and how many of them there really are out in the mainstream population I think we may be seeing one of the most important inventions of the modern era. I may be overstating it a little but it's hard to argue against the fact that there isn't a more widely used device. Many people don't even have a "normal" house phone (myself included) anymore. Anyway I'll just throw that up there and see if it sticks and I'll probably chime in some more later.

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We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...

Another couple of people from todays times are: Vinton Gray "Vint" Cerf and Robert Elliot "Bob" Kahn, not to many actually know their names and I'll admit I did also look it up. They are they two men most directly responsible for this thing that today we call the Intraweb or what have you.

Contrary to popular belief Al Gore did not invent the Internet, however to be fair he did help develop a good deal of what we use today on a daily basis, the information superhighway as he called it. And he was probably responsible for really getting political leaders more on board with what was originally just going to be a Defense computer network system that actually had been getting worked on in one form or another since Sputnik back in 1958.

So, in short those 3 men have done something pretty amazing and I'm sure they will be talked about for centuries. The World Wide Web is still really only beginning to tap into its potential and to me that's a pretty significant thing indeed.

I'm going with this genius who is often cited as the Father of the Modern World.

This article from Here



Nikola Tesla

Born in a small town called Smilian in Serbia, Mr. Tesla is regarded as one of the founders of the telecommunications industry. He passed away in January of 1943 in New York.
Nikola worked hard and long on high frequency radio waves. He was the first to demonstrate the transmission of electrical energy without wires and in 1899 he actually created a station in Colorado where he proved he could receive 1,000 Kilometers away - very clear radio signals. He is the inventor of inductive coupling between two circuits.
Tesla has over 100 patents in the field and the entire call center and answering service industry as well as all telecom companies owe him a great deal.
When people speak of standing on the shoulders of giants, Nikola Tesla is such a giant.

According to legend, Tesla was born precisely at midnight during an electrical storm, to a Serbian family in his village. That's the stuff legends are made of. It's like quite a few American Presidents in the early days of the Republic dying on the 4th of July, which is the American Independence Day.
In 1919 Tesla wrote that Thomas Edison offered him the huge amount of $50,000 (almost $1 million today) , adjusted for inflation if he completed the motor and generator improvements that he had been working on. Tesla said he worked nearly a year to redesign them and gave the Edison company several enormously profitable new patents in the process. When Tesla inquired about the $50,000, Edison reportedly replied to him, "Tesla, you don't understand our American humor," and reneged on his promise Tesla resigned when he was refused a raise to $25 per week.
Thomas Edison was a shrewd businessman and genius in his own right. Tesla's had a salary of only less than 20 dollars a week. That would have been worth like over 50 years of pay for him had Edison kept with his promise.
Surprisingly, Tesla found himself doing manual labor, and his genius in telecommunications would be either discarded or used by others like Edison. Every contact center or cell phone company, or answering service owes the man a great deal. From AT&T to Sprint, to now Yahoo/SBC and so on. they all owe Tesla for being the genius that he was and helping make the telecom field what it is today.
We here at the Successful Office Group will forever remember him, and our reps are told of his genius once they become team leaders.


This article from Here


Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), born in Croatia (at that time within Austro-Hungary), is well known and need not be particularly introduced. We feel it is necessary to cite his words that he was equally proud of his Croatian motherland and Serbian descent. He completed his elementary and secondary school education in Croatia (in Gospic and Karlovac), and studied in Graz and Prague. He is the father of alternating electrical current technology and the three phase system. He is equally known by his contribution to the high frequency technology and wireless communications. The impact of Tesla's numerous inventions (more than 700 patents) on the development of modern civilization is immeasurable. The unit for magnetic induction Tesla, was named after him (Conference general des poids et mesures, Paris, 1960). He refused to receive the Nobel prize which he had to share with T.A. Edison.




Windows of the building of Electricité de Strasbourg in France, where Tesla had worked for some time, have inscriptions with names of outstanding scientists. There you can see his name surrounded with Laplace, Planck, Bohr, Einstein and Rutherford (click on the left). In front of the building of International Union for Telecommunications in Geneva there is a statue of Nikola Tesla. When his mother died, he payed a visit to Croatian capital Zagreb in 1892, where he gave a lecture about alternating current. On that occasion he said:

As a son of my homeland I feel it is my duty to help the city of Zagreb in every respect with my advice and work (Smatram svojom duznoscu da kao rodeni sin svoje zemlje pomognem gradu Zagrebu u svakom pogledu savjetom i cinom), and suggested to build alternating current power plant. There is no doubt that by saying "homeland" he meant Croatia.

In 1931, at the age of 75, Tesla received birthday greetings from Lee de Forest and Albert Einstein. His monument carved by Ivan Mestrovic, who knew him personally, can be seen in Zagreb. After the end of World War II, the famous sculptor was asked by Belgrade officials to prepare Tesla's monument for the capital of Yugoslavia, but he refused, explaining that Tesla did not like the city. By the way, the family name Tesla does not exist in Serbia. Another monument, carved by Croatian sculptor Frano Krsinic, can be seen near Tesla's hydro power plant on Niagara Falls. A part of Technical Museum in Zagreb is dedicated to Nikola Tesla. According to some recreational sources on WWW, four greatest geniuses in the history of Mankind are Gutenberg, Edison, da Vinci, and Tesla (in this order). There is not doubt that with a different homeland Tesla's position on the list would be much higher. Even today, so many years after Tesla's death (1943), his numerous manuscripts are kept as top secret by the Ministry of Defense of the USA (see Margaret Cheney, Tesla: Man Out of Time, Prentice Hall, 1981; Vladimir Muljevic, Nikola Tesla, slavni izumitelj, Hrvatska zajednica tehnicke kulture, Zagreb, 2000, p. 75.)

Technical Museum in Zagreb, about Tesla's inventions (rotating egg, Tesla's three phase generator, Tesla's transformer, Tesla's remote control boat, etc).

The Supreme Court of the USA overturned Marconi's patent of modern radio in favor of Nikola Tesla in 1943, soon after his death.

• Nikola Tesla, numerous links
• Nikola Tesla, the man who invented the modern world
  for example Tesla has indisputable priority in inventions of modern radio, X-rays, vacuum tube amplifier, radar, first robots, etc.
• Nikola Tesla, forgotten american scientist, by John W. Wagner

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Carl Sagan and George Orwell for starters.

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

Continuing what an earlier poster posted, but heres my vote for most significant:

Adolf Hitler

Lets not forget that being one of the most notorious and heinous militant leaders in the 19th century, and how his views and actions changed the whole world. He has affected pretty much everyone in his time period, and I believe he still affects our world today. Undeniably, one of the most significant people in our world

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-Hattori Hanzo

Wait, Tesla, David Bowie? What?

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My initial reaction, and the reason I started the thread, was because I was leaning toward Pacifist thought. Now, the fact that we are in the current world situation we are leads me to believe that maybe my choices aren't really as significant as I thought. But even so, I can dream about it, can't I?



I thought that Einstein was a given for his scientific thought, theories, work and accomplishments. I thought that put him into the top echelon right there, but the thing which pushed him up another level was that he basically did everything he did, with only a modicum of pride, and then he renounced it when he saw it being used for destruction. He was not only the greatest scientific mind of the century, but the one, who by realizing what he had wrought, felt the desire to basically renounce any and all of it which was used for violence and destruction. I admire him immensely.



Then, I thought of another non-violent person. In the U.S., we had Martin Luther King, and I don't want to denigrate any of his immense legacy which still affects our society, but before King, Gandhi used non-violence, and when he was finished with his stance, billions of people were freer than they had been previously. Now, I don't mean to attack the British Empire. I'll attack any attempts my own wonderful country does which ever seem to be imperialist, but the Empire was well-represented all over the place, and this stubborn, skinny guy, who refused to eat, basically brought down an Empire. Of course, it was a long journey, and WWII had a deep effect on everybody, but Gandhi was able to accomplish so much while seemingly doing so little.



As far as dictators go, Hitler obviously affected millions of people and will continue to do so. However, if you want to go with the most current numbers we have, Hitler, Stalin and Mao are in a race to become the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century. They are all responsible for staggering numbers of deaths in the millions. The thing is that Hitler's murders were done more out in the open even if people say that they had no idea at the time. It's more difficult to determine the millions of dissidents and undesirables who were killed in the Soviet Union and China during the 20th Century. Therefore, even if Hitler is the Poster Child for Insane Megalomaniac Dictator, he may actually end up in third place, compared to the mysterious, unknown atrocities committed by the policies of Stalin and Mao.



I'm disturbed these guys are smiling, and I hope you are too.

He was also the first leader to introduce a Social Security system and don't forget the Volks Wagen (VW) or people's car ... an affordable car for everyone .... brrrrrm brrrrrm ... my first car Bessy, was a beetle


and the coolest uniforms in WW II ... the German tour of Europe (unfortunately canclled) was done in style


The innovative helmet is still the basis of many today, the jackboots that didn't require socks but a specially folded cloth stopped blistering ... the Luger


There is no doubt that Hitler that master of oratory, propaganda and the staging of massed rallies influenced politicians and leaders world wide in how to tap into the psychie of the populous.



But seriously you can't beat the creative genius of Tesla who laid the foundations for our modern world. He influenced so many diverse fields with his patents and ideas. He was even working on a form of free energy based on the tapping of the earth's magnetic field ... but this of course was suppressed and dismissed as folly

Those are all very noble but here's my choice.











Significance may be one thing, greatness is something else entirely...

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

Jonas Salk


Not even interested in medicine at first, Salk heard two lectures that got him curious about vaccinations. Later, Salk was at university studying the influenza virus that had wiped out so many people after the first World War, but had a special interest in the polio virus.
At the height of the polio epidemic in 1952, nearly 60,000 cases with more than 3,000 deaths were reported in the United States alone. However, with the widespread vaccination Salk developed in 1955, wild-type polio, or polio occurring through natural infection, was eliminated from the United States by 1979 and the Western hemisphere by 1991.

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If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.

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