قول مايكل هارت في مقدمة كتابه العظماء مائة :
إن اختياري محمداً، ليكون الأول في أهم وأعظم رجال التاريخ، قد يدهش القراء، ولكنه الرجل الوحيد في التاريخ كله الذي نجح أعلى نجاح على المستويين: الديني والدنيوي.
فهناك رُسل وأنبياء وحكماء بدءوا رسالات عظيمة، ولكنهم ماتوا دون إتمامها، كالمسيح في المسيحية، أو شاركهم فيها غيرهم، أو سبقهم إليهم سواهم، كموسى في اليهودية، ولكن محمداً هو الوحيد الذي أتم رسالته الدينية، وتحددت أحكامها، وآمنت بها شعوب بأسرها في حياته. ولأنه أقام جانب الدين دولة جديدة، فإنه في هذا المجال الدنيوي أيضاً، وحّد القبائل في شعـب، والشعوب في أمة، ووضع لها كل أسس حياتها، ورسم أمور دنياها، ووضعها في موضع الانطلاق إلى العالم. أيضاً في حياته، فهو الذي بدأ الرسالة الدينية والدنيوية، وأتمها.
مــــــــــحــــــــــمــــــــــد
صــلــى الــلــه عــلــيــه و ســلــم
Adolf Hitler
Einstein
Aristotle
Augustus Caesar
Graham Bell
Buddha
Columbus
Confucius
Edison
Freud
Galilee
Ghandy
Gutenberg
Newton
Jesus
John F. Kennedy
Julius Caesar
Lamartin
Lenin
Michel Angelo
Tolostoy
St. Paul
Pasteur Louis
Napoleon
Alexander
Joseph Stalin
William Shakespeare
Washington
Voltaire
Tsailun
Rank
Name
Religious Affiliation
Influence
1
Muhammad
Islam
Prophet of Islam; Hart recognized that ranking Muhammad first might be controversial, but felt that, from a secular historians perspective, this was the correct choice because Muhammad is the only man to have been both a founder of a major world religion and a major military/political leader.
2
Isaac Newton
Anglican (rejected Trinitarianism;
believed in the Arianism of
the Primitive Church)
physicist; theory of universal gravitation; laws of motion
3
Jesus Christ
Judaism; Christianity
founder of Christianity
4
Buddha
Hinduism; Buddhism
founder of Buddhism
5
Confucius
Confucianism
founder of Confucianism
6
St. Paul
Judaism; Christianity
proselytizer of Christianity
7
Tsai Lun
Chinese traditional religion
inventor of paper
8
Johann Gutenberg
Catholic
developed movable type; printed Bibles
9
Christopher Columbus
Catholic
explorer; led Europe to Americas
10
Albert Einstein
Jewish
physicist; relativity; Einsteinian physics
11
Louis Pasteur
Catholic
scientist; pasteurization
12
Galileo Galilei
Catholic
astronomer; accurately described heliocentric solar system
13
Aristotle
Platonism / Greek philosophy
influential Greek philosopher
14
Euclid
Platonism / Greek philosophy
mathematician; Euclidian geometry
15
Moses
Judaism
major prophet of Judaism
16
Charles Darwin
Anglican (nominal)
biologist; described Darwinian evolution, which had theological impact on many religions
17
Shih Huang Ti
Chinese traditional religion
Chinese emperor
18
Augustus Caesar
Roman state paganism
ruler
19
Nicolaus Copernicus
Catholic (priest)
astronomer; taught heliocentricity
20
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier
Catholic
father of modern chemistry; philosopher; economist
21
Constantine the Great
Roman state paganism; Christianity
Roman emperor who made Christianity the state religion
22
James Watt
nonreligious
developed steam engine
23
Michael Faraday
Sandemanian
physicist; chemist; discovery of magneto-electricity
24
James Clerk Maxwell
Presbyterian; Anglican; Baptist
physicist; electromagnetic spectrum
25
Martin Luther
Catholic; Lutheran
founder of Protestantism and Lutheranism
26
George Washington
Episcopalian; Deist
first president of United States
27
Karl Marx
Jewish; Christian;
Atheist; Marxism/Communism
founder of Communism
28
Orville and Wilbur Wright
United Brethren
inventors of airplane
29
Genghis Khan
Mongolian shamanism
Mongol conqueror
30
Adam Smith
Liberal Protestant
economist; expositor of capitalism; religious philosopher
31
Edward de Vere
a.k.a. "William Shakespeare"
Christianity
literature; also wrote 6 volumes about philosophy and religion
32
John Dalton
Quaker
chemist; physicist; atomic theory; law of partial pressures (Daltons law)
33
Alexander the Great
Greek state paganism
conqueror
34
Napoleon Bonaparte
Catholic (nominal)
French conqueror
35
Thomas Edison
Congregationalist; agnostic
inventor of light bulb, phonograph, etc.
36
Antony van Leeuwenhoek
Calvinist
microscopes; studied microscopic life
37
William T.G. Morton
??
pioneer in anesthesiology
38
Guglielmo Marconi
Catholic and Anglican
inventor of radio
39
Adolf Hitler
born into but later rejected Catholicism; allegedly a proponent of Germanic Neo-Paganism; Nazism
conqueror; led Axis Powers in WWII
40
Plato
Platonism / Greek philosophy
founder of Platonism
41
Oliver Cromwell
Puritan (Protestant)
British political and military leader
42
Alexander Graham Bell
Unitarian/Universalist
inventor of telephone
43
Alexander Fleming
Catholic
penicillin; advances in bacteriology, immunology and chemotherapy
44
John Locke
raised Puritan (Anglican);
Liberal Christian
philosopher and liberal theologian
45
Ludwig van Beethoven
Catholic
composer
46
Werner Heisenberg
discovered the principle of uncertainty
47
Louis Daguerre
??
an inventor/pioneer of photography
48
Simon Bolivar
Catholic (nominal); Atheist
National hero of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia
49
Rene Descartes
Catholic
Rationalist philosopher and mathematician
50
Michelangelo
Catholic
painter; sculptor; architect
51
Pope Urban II
Catholic
called for First Crusade
52
Umar ibn al-Khattab
Islam
Second Caliph; expanded Muslim empire
53
Asoka
Buddhism
king of India who converted to and spread Buddhism
54
St. Augustine
Christianity
Early Christian theologian
55
William Harvey
Anglican (nominal)
described the circulation of blood; wrote Essays on the Generation of Animals, the basis for modern embryology
56
Ernest Rutherford
??
physicist; pioneer of subatomic physics
57
John Calvin
Protestant; Calvinism
Protestant reformer; founder of Calvinism
58
Gregor Mendel
Catholic (monk)
Mendelian genetics
59
Max Planck
Protestant
physicist; thermodynamics
60
Joseph Lister
Quaker
principal discoverer of antiseptics which greatly reduced surgical mortality
61
Nikolaus August Otto
??
built first four-stroke internal combustion engine
62
Francisco Pizarro
Catholic
Spanish conqueror in South America; defeated Incas
63
Hernando Cortes
Catholic
conquered Mexico for Spain; through war and introduction of new diseases he largely destroyed Aztec civilization
64
Thomas Jefferson
Episcopalian; Deist
3rd president of United States
65
Queen Isabella I
Catholic
Spanish ruler
66
Joseph Stalin
Russian Orthodox; Atheist; Marxism
revolutionary and ruler of USSR
67
Julius Caesar
Roman state paganism
Roman emperor
68
William the Conqueror
Catholic
laid foundation of modern England
69
Sigmund Freud
Jewish (non-practicing); Atheist
Freudian psychology/psychoanalysis
founder of Freudian school of psychology; psychoanalysis
70
Edward Jenner
Christianity
discoverer of the vaccination for smallpox
71
Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen
??
discovered X-rays
72
Johann Sebastian Bach
Lutheran; Catholic
composer
73
Lao Tzu
Taoism
founder of Taoism
74
Voltaire
raised in Jansenism;
later Deist
writer and philosopher; wrote Candide
75
Johannes Kepler
Lutheran
astronomer; planetary motions
76
Enrico Fermi
Catholic
initiated the atomic age; father of atom bomb
77
Leonhard Euler
Calvinist
physicist; mathematician; differential and integral calculus and algebra
78
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
born Protestant;
converted as a teen to Catholic;
later Deist
French deistic philosopher and author
79
Nicoli Machiavelli
Catholic
wrote The Prince (influential political treatise)
80
Thomas Malthus
Anglican (cleric)
economist; wrote Essay on the Principle of Population
81
John F. Kennedy
Catholic
president of United States
82
Gregory Pincus
Jewish
endocrinologist; developed birth-control pill
83
Mani
Manicheanism
founder of Manicheanism, once a world religion which rivaled Christianity in strength
84
Lenin
Russian Orthodox;
Atheist; Marxism/Communism [more]
Russian ruler
85
Sui Wen Ti
Chinese traditional religion
unified China
86
Vasco da Gama
Catholic
navigator; discovered route from Europe to India around Cape Hood
87
Cyrus the Great
Zoroastrianism
founder of Persian empire
88
Peter the Great
Russian Orthodox
forged Russia into a great European nation
89
Mao Zedong
Atheist; Communism; Maoism
founder of Maoism, Chinese form of Communism
90
Francis Bacon
Anglican
philosopher; delineated inductive scientific method
91
Henry Ford
Protestant
developed automobile; achievement in manufacturing and assembly
92
Mencius
Confucianism
philosopher; founder of a school of Confucianism
93
Zoroaster
Zoroastrianism
founder of Zoroastrianism
94
Queen Elizabeth I
Anglican
British monarch; restored Church of England to power after Queen Mary
95
Mikhail Gorbachev
Russian Orthodox
Russian premier who helped end Communism in USSR
96
Menes
Egyptian paganism
unified Upper and Lower Egypt
97
Charlemagne
Catholic
Holy Roman Empire created with his baptism in 800 AD
98
Homer
Greek paganism
epic poet
99
Justinian I
Catholic
Roman emperor; reconquered Mediterranean empire; accelerated Catholic-Monophysite schism
100
Mahavira
Hinduism; Jainism
founder of Jainism
RU
St. Thomas Aquinas
Catholic
influential early Christian philosopher
RU
Archimedes
Greek philosophy
father of experimental science
RU
Charles Babbage
??
mathematician and inventor of forerunner of computer
RU
Cheops
Egyptian paganism
Egyptian ruler; builder of Great Pyramid
RU
Marie Curie
Catholic; nonreligious
physicist; radioactivity
RU
Benjamin Franklin
Presbyterian; Deist
American politician and inventor
RU
Mohandas Gandhi
Hinduism; influenced by Jainism (mother was a Jain)
Indian leader and Hindu religious reformer
RU
Abraham Lincoln
Regular Baptist (childhood);
later ambiguous -
Deist, general theist or
a very personalized Christianity
16th president of U.S.; led during Civil War
RU
Ferdinand Magellan
Catholic
navigator; named Pacific Ocean; first circumnavigation of globe
RU
Leonardo da Vinci
Catholic
artist; inventor
