Mano-E-Mano 2010

The Most Influencial People in the World: MICHELANGELO (1475-1564)

2010-09-21T18:06:00.000+05:30

The great Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti is the outstanding figure in the history of the visual arts. A brilliant painter, sculptor, and architect, Michelangelo left behind an assortment of masterpieces which have impressed viewers for over four centuries. His work profoundly influenced the subsequent development of European painting and sculpture.

Michelangelo was born in 1475, in the town of Caprese, Italy, about forty miles from Florence. He showed talent at an early age, and at thirteen he was apprenticed to the famous painter Ghirlandaio, in Florence. When Michelangelo was fifteen, he was taken to live in the Medici palace, almost as a member of the family, by Lorenzo the Magnificent, the ruler of Florence, who became his patron. Throughout his career, Michelangelo’s enormous talent was obvious, and he was frequently commissioned by popes and secular rulers alike, to design and produce works of art. Although he lived in various places, most of his life was spent in Rome and Florence. He died in Rome, in 1564, shortly before his eighty-ninth birthday. He never married.

Although he was not quite as universal a genius as his older contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo’s versatility is still extremely impressive. He was the only artist, indeed, perhaps the only person, ever to reach the highest peaks of achievement in two separate fields of human endeavor. As a painter, Michelangelo ranks at or near the very top, both in the quality of his finest work and in the influence he has had upon later painters. The enormous set of frescoes with which he decorated the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome in justly celebrated as one of the greatest artistic achievements of all time. Nevertheless, Michelangelo considered himself to be primarily a sculptor, and many critics consider him the greatest sculptor who ever lived. His statues of David and of Moses, for example, and the famous Pietà, are all works of unexcelled artistry.

Michelangelo was also a highly talented architect. Among his well-known achievements in this field is the design of the Medici Chapel in Florence. For a good many years, he was also the chief architect of St. Peter’s in Rome.

Michelangelo composed many poems during his lifetime, some 300 of which survive. His numerous sonnets and other poems were not published until well his death. They provide considerable insight into his personality, and clearly show that he was a talented poet.

As I have explained in the article on Shakespeare, it is my belief that art and artists in general have had comparatively little influence upon human history and everyday life. It is for that reason that Michelangelo, despite his eminence as an artistic genius, appears lower on this list than many scientists and investors, many of whom are far less famous than he.

The Most Influencial People in the World: POPE URBAN II (1042-1099)

2010-09-21T18:00:00.000+05:30

Not many people today remember Pope Urban II. Yet there have been few men whose impact on human history has been so obvious and so direct, for Urban II was the pope whose call for a Christian war to recapture the Holy Land from the Moslems inaugurated the Crusades.

Urban, whose original name was Odo de Lagery, was born about 1042, near the city of Chatillon-sur-Marne in France. He came from a great family of French noble, and he received a good education. As a young man, he was an archdeacon at Reims. Later, he became successively a Cluniac monk, a prior, and a cardinal-bishop, before his election as pope in 1088.

Urban was a strong, effective, and politically astute pope, but this is not what has earned him a place in this book. The action for which Urban II is principally remembered occurred on November 27, 1095. He had convoked a great church council, held at the city of Clermont if France. There, before a crowd of thousands, Urban delivered what was perhaps the single most effective speech in history—one that was to influence Europe for centuries to come. In his speech, Urban protest that the Seljuk Turks, who were occupying the Holy Land, were defiling the Christian holy places and molesting Christian pilgrims. Urban urged that all Christendom join together in a holy war—a great crusade to recapture the Holy Land for Christianity. But Urban was far too clever to appeal to altruistic motives alone. He pointed than the overcrowded land was fruitful and wealthy—far richer than the overcrowded lands of Christian Europe. Finally, the Pope announced, participation in the crusade would take the place of all penances and assure the crusader of remission of all his sins.

Urban’s brilliant speech, which appealed at the same time to his listeners’ highest motives and to their most selfish ones, aroused passionate enthusiasm in his audience. Before he had finished, the multitude was shouting, “Deus le volt!” (God wills it), which was soon to become the battle cry of the crusaders. Within a few months, the First Crusade was under way. It was to be followed by a long series of holy wars (there were eight major crusades and many smaller ones), which took place over a period of roughly two hundred years.

As for Urban himself, he died in 1099; two weeks after the First Crusade succeeded in capturing Jerusalem, but before news of that capture had reached him.

It hardly seems necessary to explain the importance of the Crusades. Like all wars, they had a direct influence upon the participants, and upon the civilian populations caught in their path. In addition, however, the Crusades had the effect of bringing Western Europe into close contact with the Byzantine and Islamic civilizations, which at that time were considerably more advanced than Western Europe. That contact helped prepare the way for the Renaissance, which in turn led to the full flowering of modern European civilization.

Pope Urban II is on this list only because of the enormous significance of the Crusades, but also because it is unlikely that they would have taken place without his inspiration. Obviously, conditions were ripe; otherwise his speech would have fallen upon deaf ears. However, to start a general European movement, the leadership of some central figure was needed. No national king could have done it. (Had a German emperor, for example, declared a holy war against the Turks, and led his armies on a crusade, it is doubt that many English knights would have joined him.) There was only one figure in Western Europe whose authority transcended national boundaries. Only the Pope could propose a project for all western Christendom to engage in, with a hope that large numbers of persons would follow his suggestion. Without the leadership of the Pope, and the dramatic speech which he made, the Crusades, as a mass European movement, would probably never have begun.

Nor were circumstances as such that virtually any person holding the papal office would have proposed a crusade to liberate the Holy Land. On the contrary, it was in many ways an impractical suggestion. Most prudent leaders would be very reluctant to make an unusual proposal, the consequences of which were so difficult to predict. But Urban II dared to do so; and by so doing he had a greater and more enduring effect on human history than many far more famous men.

The Most Influencial People in the World: ÚMAR IBN AL-KHATTAB (c. 586-644)

2010-07-28T23:33:00.002+05:30

‘Umar ibn al-Khattab was the second, and probably the greatest, of the Moslem caliphs. He was a younger contemporary of Muhammad, and like the Prophet, was born in Mecca. The year of his birth is unknown, but was perhaps about 586.

‘Umar was originally one of the bitterest opponents of Muhammad and his new religion. Rather suddenly, however, ‘Umar became converted to Islam, and thereafter was one of its strongest supporters. (The parallel with the conversion of St. Paul to Christianity is striking.) ‘Umar became one of the closest advisors of the prophet Muhammad, and remained so throughout Muhammad’s life.

In 632, Muhammad died without having named a successor. ‘Umar promptly supported the candidacy of Abu Bakr, a close associate and father-in-law of the Prophet. This avoided a power struggle and enabled Abu Bakr to be generally recognized as the first caliph (i.e., as the “successor” of Muhammad). Abu Bakr was a successful leader, but he died after serving as caliph for only two years. He had, however, specifically named ‘Umar (who was also a father-in-law of the Prophet) to succeed him, so once again a power struggle was avoided. ‘Umar became caliph in 634, and retained power until 644, when he was assassinated in Medina by a Persian slave. On his deathbed, ‘Umar named a committee of six persons to choose his successor, thereby again averting an armed struggle for power. The committee closes Othman, the third caliph, who ruled from 644 to 656.

It was during the ten years of ‘Umar’s caliphate that the most important conquest of the Arabs occurred. Not long after ‘Umar’s accession, Arad armies invaded Syria and Palestine, which at that time were part of the Byzantine Empire. At the Battle of the Yarmuk (636), the Arabs won a crushing victory over the Byzantine forces. Damascus fell the same year, and Jerusalem surrendered two years later. By 641, the Arabs had conquered all of Palestine and Syria, and were advancing into present-day Turkey. In 639, Arab armies invaded Egypt, which had also been under Byzantine rule. Within three years, the Arab conquest of Egypt was complete.

Arab attacks upon Iraq, at that time part of the Sassanid Empire of the Persians, had commenced even before ‘Umar took office. The key Arab victory, at the battle of Qadisiya (637) occurred during ‘Umar’s reign. By 641, all of Iraq was under Arab control. Nor was that all: Arab armies invaded Persia itself, and at the battle of Nehavend (642) they decisively defeated the forces of the last Sassanid emperor. By the time ‘Umar died, in 644, most of western Iran had been overrun. Nor had the Arab armies ran out of momentum when ‘Umar died. In the East, they fairly soon completed the conquest of Persia, while in the west they continued their push across North Africa.

Just as important as the extent of ‘Umar conquests is their permanence. Iran, though its population became converted to Islam, eventually regained its independence from Arab rule. But Syria, Iraq, and Egypt never did. Those countries became thoroughly Arabized and remain so to this day.

Umar, of course, had to devise policies for the rule of the great empire that his armies had conquered. He decided that the Arabs were to be a privileged military caste in the regions they had conquered, and that they should live in garrison cities, apart from the natives. The subject peoples were to pay tribute to their Moslem (largely Arab) conquerors, but were otherwise to be left in peace. In particular, they were not to be forcibly converted to Islam. (From the above, it is clear that the Arab conquest was more a nationalist war of conquest than a holy war, although the religious aspect was certainly not lacking.)

‘Umar’s achievements are impressive indeed. After Muhammad himself, he was the principal figure in the spread of Islam. Without his rapid conquest, it is doubtful that Islam would be nearly as widespread today as it actually is. Furthermore, most of the territory conquered during his reign has remained Arab ever since. Obviously, of course, Muhammad, who was the prime mover, should receive the bulk of the credit for those developments. But it would be a grave mistake to ignore ‘Umar’s contribution. The conquests he made were not an automatic consequence of the inspiration provided by Muhammad. Some expansion was probably bound to occur, but not to the enormous extent that it did under ‘Umar’s brilliant leadership.

It may occasion some surprise that ‘Umar—a figure virtually unknown in the West—has been ranked higher than such famous men as Charlemagne and Julius Caesar. However, the conquests made by the Arabs under ‘Umar, taking into account both their size and their duration, are substantially more important than those of either Caesar or Charlemagne.

The Most Influencial People in the World: ASOKA (C. 300 B.C.-c.232 B.C.)

2010-07-28T23:26:00.002+05:30

Asoka, who was probably the most important monarch in the history of India, was the third ruler of the Mauryan dynasty and the grandson of its founder, Chandragupta Maurya. Chandragupta was an Indian military leader, who in the years subsequent to the campaign of Alexander the Great, conquered most of northern India, and thereby established the first major empire in Indian history.

The year of Asoka’s birth is unknown; probably it was close to 300 B.C. Asoka ascended the throne about 273 B.C. At first he followed in his grandfather’s footsteps and sought to extend his territory through military action. In the eighth year of his reign, he concluded a successful war against Kalinga, a state on the east coast of India (about where the present state of Orissa is). But when he realized the horrible human cost of his triumph, Asoka was appalled. One hundred thousand persons had been killed, and an even larger number wounded. Shocked and remorseful, Asoka decided that he would not complete the military conquest of India, but would instead renounce all aggressive warfare. He adopted Buddhism as his religious philosophy, and attempted to practice the virtues of dharma, which include truthfulness, mercy, and nonviolence.

On a personal level, Asoka gave up hunting and became a vegetarian. Of more significance were the various humane and political policies that he adopted. He established hospitals and animal sanctuaries, mitigated many harsh laws, built roads, and promoted irrigation. He even appointed special government officials, dharma officers, to instruct people in piety and to encourage friendly human relationships. All religions were tolerated in his realm, but Asoka particularly promoted Buddhism, which naturally enjoyed a great increase in its popularity. Buddhist missions were sent to many foreign countries, and were especially successful in Ceylon.

Asoka ordered descriptions of his life and policies inscribed on rocks and pillars throughout his large realm. Many of these monuments survive to the present day. Their geographic distribution provides us with reliable information concerning the extent of Asoka’s domain, and the inscriptions on them are our main source of knowledge of his career. Incidentally, these pillars are also considered to be superb works of art.

Within fifty years of Asoka’s death, the Mauryan Empire fell apart, and it was never revived. However, through his support of Buddhism, Asoka’s long-term influence upon the world has been very large. When he ascended the throne, Buddhism was a small, local religion, popular only in northwest India. By the time of his death, it had adherents throughout India and was spreading rapidly to neighboring countries. More than any one man, except Gautama himself, Asoka is responsible for the development of Buddhism into a major world religion.

The Most Influencial People in the World: ST. AUGUSTINE (354-430)

2010-07-28T23:23:00.000+05:30

Augustine, who lived during the declining years of the Roman Empire, was the greatest theologian of his era. His writings profoundly influenced Christian doctrines and attitudes throughout the middle Ages, and indeed still have influence today.

Augustine was born in 354, in the town of Tagaste (now Souk-Ahras, in Algeria), about forty-five miles south of the large coastal town of Hippo (now Annaba). His father was a pagan; his mother a devout Christian. He was not baptized as an infant.

Even in his adolescence, Augustine’s intelligence was impressive, and at sixteen he was sent to Carthage to study. There he took a mistress and had an illegitimate child. At nineteen, he decided to study philosophy. He soon converted to Manichaeism; the religion founded about 240 by the prophet Mani. To the young Augustine, Christianity seemed unsophisticated, while Manichaeism. When Augustine was twenty-nine, he moved to Rome. A bit later he moved to Milan, in northern Italy, where he became a professor of rhetoric. There he became familiar with Neo-Platonism, a modified version of Plato’s philosophy that had been developed by Plotinus in the third century.

The bishop in Milan at that time was St. Ambrose. Augustine listened to some of his sermons, which introduced him to a new, more sophisticated aspect of Christianity. At the age of thirty-two, Augustine was converted, and the one-time skeptic became an ardent proponent of Christianity. In 387, Augustine was baptized by Ambrose, and soon thereafter he returned home to Tagaste.

In 391, Augustine became the assistant to the bishop of hippo. Five years later the bishop died, and Augustine, then forty-two years old, became the new bishop of Hippo. He remained at that post for the rest of his life.

Although Hippo was not an important city, Augustine’s brilliance was so obvious that he soon became one of the most respected leaders in the church. Although he had a weak constitution, with the help of stenographers he was able to compose a large number of religious writings. About 500 of his sermons survive, as do more than 200 of his letters. Of his books, the two most famous and influential are The City of God and his Confessions. The latter, which is one of the most famous autobiographies even written, was composed when he was in his forties.

Many of Augustine’s letters and sermons are devoted to refuting the beliefs of the Manichaean’s, the Donatists (a schismatic Christians sect), and the Pelagians (another heretical Christian group of the day). His dispute with the Pelagians forms an important part of Augustine’s religious doctrines. Pelagius was an English monk who came to Rome about 400, and there expounded several interesting theological doctrines. We are each, Pelagius claimed, without original sin, and are free to choose good or evil. By righteous living and good works, an individual can attain salvation.

Partly through the influence of St. Augustine’s writings, the views of Pelagius were declared heretical, and Pelagius himself (who had already been banished from Rome) was excommunicated. According to Augustine, all men are stained with Adam’s sin. Human beings are unable to attain salvation solely through their own efforts and good works: the grace of God is necessary for salvation. Similar ideas had been expressed previously; however, Augustine amplified the earlier statements, and his writings solidified the Church’s position on these points, which thereafter became fixed.

Augustine maintained that God already knows who will be saved and who will not, and that some of us are therefore predestined to be saved. This idea of predestination was to greatly influence later theologians, such as St. Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin.

Probably even more important than the doctrine of predestination were St. Augustine’s attitudes concerning sex. When he converted to Christianity, Augustine had decided that it was necessary for him to renounce sex. (He once wrote, “Nothing is so much to be shunned as sex relations.”) However, the actual renunciation proved quite difficult for St. Augustine; both his personal struggle in his views on the subject are described at some length in his Confessions. The views he expressed there, because of Augustine’s great reputation, exerted a strong influence upon medieval attitudes toward sex. Augustine’s writing also linked together the notion of original sin and sexual desire.

During Augustine’s life, the Roman Empire was rapidly declining. In fact, in 410, the city of Rome was sacked by the Visigoths under Alaric. Naturally, the remaining Roman pagans claimed that the Romans were thereby being punished for their desertion of their ancient gods in favor of Christianity. St. Augustine’s most famous book, The City of God, is in part a defense of Christianity against that charge. However, the book also includes an entire philosophy of history, one that was to have considerable influence upon later developments in Europe. Augustine expressed the view that the Roman Empire was not of any basic importance, nor was the city Rome, nor any earthly city. What was really important was the growth of the “heavenly city”—in other words, the spiritual progress of mankind. The vehicle for this progress was, of course, the Church. (“There is no salvation outside the Church.”) It therefore followed that emperors, whether pagan or Christian or barbarian, were not as important as the Pope and the Church were.

Although Augustine himself did not take the final step, the thrust of his argument leads easily to the conclusion that temporal rulers should be subordinate to the Pope. Medieval popes were glad to draw that conclusion from Augustine, and his doctrines therefore laid the foundation for the long conflict between Church and State that was to characterize European history for many centuries.

Augustine’s writings were a factor in the transmission of certain aspects of Greek philosophy to medieval Europe. In particular, Neo-Platonism strongly influenced Augustine’s mature thought, and through Augustine it influenced medieval Christian philosophy. It is also interesting to note that Augustine expressed the idea behind Descartes’ famous statement, “I think, therefore I am,” though in different words, of course.

Augustine was the last great Christian theologian before the Dark Ages, and his writings left Church doctrine, in all its major outlines, in roughly the form it was to keep throughout the Middle Ages. He was the most eminent of the Latin Church fathers, and his writings were widely read by the clergy. His views on salvation, sex, original sin, and many other points were correspondingly influential. Many later Catholic theologians, such as St. Thomas Aquinas, as well as Protestant leaders such as Luther and Calvin, were strongly influenced by him.

Augustine died in Hippo, in 430 A.D., in his seventy-sixth year. The Vandals, one of the barbarian tribes which had invaded the disintegrating Roman Empire, were besieging Hippo at the time. A few months later, they captured the town and burned most of it; however, Augustine’s library and the cathedral escaped destruction.

The Most Influencial People in the World: WILLIAM HARVEY (1578-1657)

2010-06-26T01:14:00.000+05:30

William Harvey, the great English physician who discovered the circulation of the blood and the function of the heart, was born in 1578, in the town of Folkston, England. Harvey’s great book, An Anatomical Treatise on the movement of the Heart and Blood in Animals, published in 1628, has rightly been called the most important book in the entire history of physiology. It is, in fact, the starting point of the modern science of physiology. Its primary importance lies not in its direct applications, but rather in the basic understanding it provides of how the human body works.

For us today, who have been brought up with the knowledge that the blood circulated, and therefore take that fact for granted, Harvey’s theory seems completely obvious. But what now appears so simple and evident was not obvious at all to earlier biologists. Leading writers on biology had expounded views such as: (a) food is turned into blood in the heart; (b) the heart heats up the blood; (c) the arteries are filled with air; (d) the heart manufactures “vital spirits”; (e) blood in both the veins and the arteries ebbs and flows, sometimes going toward the heart and sometimes away.

Galen, the greatest physician of the ancient world, a man who personally performed many dissections and thought carefully about the heart and blood vessels, never suspected that the blood circulates. Nor for that matter did Aristotle, though biology was one of his major interests. Even after the publication of Harvey’s book, many physicians were unwilling to accept his idea that the blood in the human body is constantly being recirculated through a closed system of blood vessels, with the heart supplying the force to move the blood.

Harvey first formed the notion that the blood circulates by making a simple arithmetic calculation. He estimated that the quantity of blood that was ejected by the heart every time it beat was about two ounces. Since the heart beats about 72 times per minute, simple multiplication led to the conclusion that about 540 pounds of blood were ejected each hour from the heart into the aorta. But 540 pounds far exceeds the total body weight of a normal human being, and even more greatly exceeds the weight of the blood alone. It therefore seemed obvious to Harvey that the same blood was constantly recycled through the heart. Having formulated this hypothesis, he spent nine years performing experiments and making careful observations to determine the details of the circulation of the blood.

In his book, Harvey clearly stated that the arteries carry blood away from the heart, while the veins return the blood to the heart. Lacking a microscope, Harvey was unable to see the capillaries, the minute blood vessels that transport the blood from the smallest arteries to the veins, but he correctly inferred their existence. (The capillaries were discovered by the Italian biologist, Malpighi, a few years after Harvey died.)

Harvey also stated that the function of the heart was to pump the blood into the arteries. On this, as on every other major point, Harvey’s theory was essentially correct. Furthermore, he presented a wealth of experimental evidence, with careful arguments to support his theory. Though his theory at first encountered strong opposition, by the end of his life it had been generally accepted.

Harvey also did work on embryology, which, though less important than his research on blood circulation, was not insignificant. He was a careful observer, and his book, On the Generation of Animals, published in 1651, marks the real beginning of the modern study of embryology. Like Aristotle, by whom he was strongly influenced, Harvey opposed the theory of preformation—the hypothesis that an embryo, even in its earliest stages, had the same overall structure as the adult animal, though on a much small scale. Harvey correctly asserted that the final structure of an embryo developed gradually.

Harvey had a long, interesting, and successful life. In his teens, he attended Caius College at the University of Cambridge. In 1600, he went to Italy to study medicine at the University of Padua, at that time perhaps the best medical school in the world. (It might be noted that Galileo was a professor at Padua while Harvey was there, although it is not known whether the two ever met.) Harvey received his medical degree from Padua in 1602. He then returned to England, where he had a long and very successful career as a physician. Among his patients were two kings of England (James I and Charles I), as well as the eminent philosopher Francis Bacon. Harvey lectured on anatomy at the College of Physicians in London, and in fact was once elected president of the College. (He declined the post.) In addition to his private practice, he was for many years the chief physician at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. When his book on the circulation of the blood was published, in 1628, it made him famous throughout Europe. Harvey was married, but had no children. He died in 1657, in London, at the age of seventy-nine.

The Most Influencial People in the World: ERNEST RUTHERFORD (1871-1937)

2010-06-26T01:10:00.002+05:30

Ernest Rutherford is generally considered to have been the greatest experimental physicist of the twentieth century. He is the central figure in our knowledge of radioactivity, and is also the man who originated the study of nuclear physics. In addition to their enormous theoretical importance, his discoveries have had a wide range of important applications including: nuclear weapons, nuclear power plants, radioactive tracers, and radioactive dating. His influence on the world has therefore been profound, is probably still growing, and will likely be enduring.

Rutherford was born and raised in New Zealand. He attended Canterbury College there, obtaining three degrees (B.A., M.A., and B.Sc.) by the time he was twenty-three. The following year he was awarded a scholarship to Cambridge University in England, where he spent three years as a research student under J. J. Thomson, one of the leading scientists of the day. When he was twenty-seven he became professor of physics at McGill University in Canada, where he stayed for nine years. He went back to England in 1907 to head the physics department at Manchester University. In 1919 he returned to Cambridge, this time as Director of the Cavendish Laboratory, and he remained there for the rest of his life.

Radioactivity had been discovered in 1896 by the French scientist Antoine Henri Becquerel, while he was doing some experiments with uranium compounds. But Becquerel soon lost interest in the subject, and most of our basic knowledge in the field comes from Rutherford’s extensive research. (Marie and Pierre Curie found two more radioactive elements—polonium and radium—but made no discoveries of fundamental importance.)

One of Rutherford’s first findings was that the radioactive emissions from uranium consist of two quite different components, which he called alpha rays and beta rays. He later demonstrated the nature of each component (they consist of fast-moving particles and showed that there is also a third component, which he called gamma rays.

An important feature of radioactivity is the energy involved. Becquerel, the Curies, and most other scientists had thought that the energy had an external source. But Rutherford proved that the energy involved—which was much greater than that released in chemical reactions—was coming from the interior of the individual uranium atoms! By so doing, he originated the important concept of atomic energy.

Scientists had always assumed that individual atoms were indestructible and unchangeable. But Rutherford (with the aide of a very talented young assistant, Frederick Soddy), was able to show that whenever an atom emits alpha or beta rays it is transformed into an atom of a different sort. At first, chemists found this hard to believe; but Rutherford and Soddy worked out the whole series of radioactive decays and formulated the important concept of “half-life.” This soon led to the technique of radioactive dating, which has become one of the most useful of scientific tools, with important applications in geology, archaeology, astronomy, and many other fields.

This stunning set of discoveries earned Rutherford a Nobel Prize in 1908 (Soddy later received a Nobel Prize also), but his greatest achievement was yet to come. He had noticed that fast-moving alpha particles could go right through a thin foil of gold (leaving no visible puncture!), although they were slightly deflected by the passage. This suggested those gold atoms, rather than being hard, impenetrable objects, like “”tiny billiard balls”—as scientists had previously believed—were soft inside! It seemed as if the smaller, harder alpha particles could go right through the gold atoms like a high-speed bullet going through jello.

But Rutherford (working with Geiger and Marsden, two younger associated) found that some of the alpha particles were sharply deflected when they struck the gold foil; in fact, some even bounced right back! Rutherford, sensing that something important was involved, had the experiment repeated many times, carefully counting the number of particles scattered in each direction. Then, by a very difficult but utterly convincing mathematical analysis, he showed that there was only one way of explaining the experimental results: A gold atom consisted almost entirely of empty space, with almost all of the atoms mass concentrated in a minute “nucleus” in the center!

At a single blow, Rutherford’s paper (1911) shattered forever our common-sense picture of the world. If even a piece of metal—seemingly the solidest of objects—was mostly empty space, then everything which we had regarded as substantial had suddenly dissolved into tiny specks rushing about in an immense void!

Rutherford’s discovery of the atomic nucleus is the foundation of all modern theories of atomic structure. When Niels Bohr, two years later, published his famous paper describing the atom as a miniature solar system governed by quantum mechanics, he used Rutherford’s nuclear atom as the starting point of his model. So did Heisenberg and Schrodinger when they constructed their more sophisticated atomic models using matrix mechanics and wave mechanics.

Rutherford’s discovery also led to a new branch of science: the study of the nucleus itself. In this field too, Rutherford proved to be a pioneer. In 1919, he succeeded in transforming nitrogen nuclei into oxygen nuclei by bombarding them with fast-moving alpha particles. It was an achievement to dazzle the dreams of the ancient alchemists.

It was soon realized that nuclear transformations might be the source of the Sun’s energy. Furthermore, inducing the transformation of atomic nuclei is the key process in atomic weapons, and also in nuclear power plants. Rutherford’s discovery has therefore been of far more than academic interest.

Rutherford’s “larger than life” personality constantly impressed those who met him. He was a big man, with a loud voice, boundless energy and confidence, and a conspicuous lack of modesty. When a colleague commented on Rutherford’s uncanny ability to always be “on the crest of the wave” of scientific research, he replied promptly, “Well, why not? After all, I made the wave, didn’t I?” Few scientists would disagree with that assessment.

The Most Influencial People in the World: JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564)

2010-06-26T01:09:00.000+05:30

The famous Protestant theologian and moralist John Calvin is one of the major figures of European history. His views on such diverse subjects as theology, government, personal morality, and work habits have, over a period of more than 400 years, influenced the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

John Calvin (original name: Jean Cauvin) was born in 1509, in the town of Noyon, in France. He received a good education. After attending the College de Montaigu in Paris, he went to the University of Orleans to study law. He also studied law at Bourges.

Calvin was only eight years old when Martin Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses on the church door in Wittenberg, and thereby inaugurated the Protestant Reformation. Calvin was brought up as a Catholic, but as a young man he converted to Protestantism. To avoid persecution, he soon left Paris, where he had been living, and after traveling about for a while, settled in Basel, Switzerland. There he lived under a pseudonym while he studied theology intensively. In 1536, when he was twenty-seven years old, he published his best-known work, the Institutes of the Christian Religion. This book, which summarized the essential Protestant beliefs and presented them in comprehensive and systematic form, made him famous.

Later in 1536, he visited Geneva, Switzerland, where Protestantism was rapidly gaining in strength. He was asked to stay there as a teacher and leader of the Protestant community. But conflicts soon arose between the fiercely puritanical Calvin and the Genevans, and in 1538, he was forced to leave the city. In 1541, however, he was invited to return. He did so, and he became not only the religious leader of the city, but also its effective political leader until his death in 1564.

In theory, Calvin was never a dictator in Geneva: many of the townspeople had voting rights, and much of the formal political authority was held by a council which consisted of twenty-five persons. Calvin was not a member of this council. He was subject to removal at any time (and was, in fact, expelled in 1538) if he did not have the consent of the majority. In practice, though, Calvin dominated the city, and after 1555 he was a virtual autocrat.

Under Calvin’s leadership, Geneva became the leading Protestant center of Europe. Calvin consistently tried to promote the growth of Protestantism in other countries, particularly in France, and for a while Geneva was referred to as the “Protestant Rome.” One of the first things that Calvin did after his return to Geneva was to draw up a set of ecclesiastical regulations for the Reformed Church there. These were to set a pattern for many other Reformed Churches in Europe. While in Geneva, Calvin wrote many influential religious tracts, and continued to revise the Institutes of the Christian Religion. He also gave many lectures on theology and the Bible.

Calvin’s Geneva was a rather austere and puritanical place. Not only were adultery and fornication considered serious crimes, but gambling, drunkenness, dancing, and the singing of ribald songs were all prohibited, and could result in severe punishment. Attendance at church during prescribed hours was required by law, and lengthy sermons were customary.

Calvin strongly encouraged diligence in work. He also encouraged education, and it was during his administration that the University of Geneva was founded.

Calvin was an intolerant man, and those whom he considered heretics received short shrift in Geneva. His most famous victim (there were quite a few) was Michael Servetus, a Spanish physician and theologian who did not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. When Servetus came to Geneva, he was arrested, tried for heresy, and burnt at the stake (in 1553). In addition, several persons suspected of witchcraft were burnt at the stake during Calvin’s administration.

Calvin died in Geneva, in 1564. He had married, but his wife had died in 1549, and their only child had died at birth.

Calvin’s principal importance lies not in his direct political activities, but rather in the ideology he promulgated. He stressed the authority and importance of the Bible, and like Luther, denied the authority and importance of the Roman Catholic Church. Like Luther, St. Augustine, and St. Paul, Calvin held that all men are sinners, and that salvation comes not through good works, but through faith alone. Particularly striking were Calvin’s ideas on predestination and reprobation. According to Calvin, God has already decided—and without regard to merit—who is to be saved and who is to be damned. Why, then, should an individual bother to behave morally? Calvin’s answer was that the elect” (that is, those persons whom God has chosen to accept Christ and thereby achieve redemption) have also been selected by God to behave righteously. We are not saved because we do well, but we do well because we have been chosen for salvation. Although such a doctrine may seem strange to some, there seems little doubt that it has inspired many Calvinists to lead unusually pious and upright lives.

Calvin has exerted great influence on the world. His theological doctrine ultimately gained even more adherents than Luther’s did. Though northern Germany and Scandinavia became predominantly Lutheran, Switzerland and the Netherlands became Calvinist. There were significant Calvinist minorities in Poland, Hungary, and Germany. The Presbyterians in Scotland were Calvinists, as were the Huguenots in France and the Puritans in England. Puritan influence in America, of course, has been both long and strong.

Calvin’s Geneva may have been more a theocracy than a democracy, but the net effect of Calvinism has nevertheless been to increase democracy. Perhaps the fat that in so many countries the Calvinists were a minority made them inclined to favor restrictions on established power; or perhaps the comparatively democratic internal organization of the Calvinist churches was a factor. Whatever the reason, the original Calvinist strongholds (Switzerland, Holland, and Great Britain) become strongholds of democracy as well.

It has been claimed that Calvinist doctrines were a major factor in the creation of the so-called “Protestant work ethic,” and in the rise of capitalism. It is difficult to judge the extent to which that claims is justified. The Dutch, for example, were reputed to be an industrious people long before Calvin had ever been born. On the other hand, it seems unreasonable to assume that Calvin’s firmly expressed attitude toward hard work had no influence upon his followers. (It might be noted that Calvin did permit the charging of interest, a practice which had been condemned by mist earlier Christian moralists, but one that was important to the development of capitalism.)

How high on this list should Calvin is ranked? The influence of Calvin has been confined primarily to Western Europe and North America. Furthermore, it is plain that his influence has been sharply declining during the last century. In any case, much of the credit for the existence of Calvinism has already been assigned to earlier figures such as Jesus, St. Paul, and Luther.

Although the Protestant Reformation was an event of great historical importance, it is plain that Martin Luther was the person most responsible for that upheaval. Calvin himself was only one of several influential Protestant leaders who arose after Luther. On the other hand, Calvin must be ranked well ahead of such philosophers as Voltaire and Rousseau, partly because his influence has extended over twice as long a period as theirs, and partly because his ideas have had such a profound effect on the lives of his followers.

The Most Influencial People in the World: GREGOR MENDEL (1822-1884)

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Gregor Mendel is famous today as the man who discovered the basic principles of heredity. During his lifetime, however, he was an obscure Austrian monk and amateur scientist, whose brilliant research was ignored by the scientific world.

Mendel was born in 1822, in the town of Heinzendorf, at that time within the Austrian Empire, but now part of Czechoslovakia. In 1843, he entered an Augustinian monastery in Brunn, Austria (now Brno, Czechoslovakia). He was ordained a priest in 1847. In 1850, he took an examination for teacher certification. He failed, receiving his lowest marks in biology and geology! Nevertheless, the abbot in charge of his monastery sent Mendel to the University of Vienna, where, from 1851 to 1853, he studied mathematics and science. Mendel never did get a regular teacher’s license, but from 1854 to 1868, he was a substitute teacher of natural science at the Brunn Modern School.

Meanwhile, starting in 1856, he performed his famous experiments in plant breeding. By 1865, he had derived his famous laws of heredity and presented them in a paper given before the Brunn Natural History Society. In 1866, his results were published in the Transactions of that society, in an article entitled “Experiments with Plant Hybrids.” A second article was published in the same journal three years later. Although the Transactions of the Brunn Natural History Society were not a prestigious journal, it was carried by major libraries. In addition, Mendel sent a copy of his paper to Karl Nageli, a leading authority on heredity. Nageli read the paper and replied to Mendel, but failed to comprehend the paper’s enormous importance. Thereafter, Mendel’s articles were generally ignored and, indeed, almost forgotten for over thirty years.

In 1868, Mendel was appointed abbot of his chapter, and from then on his administrative duties left him little time to continue his plant experiments. When he died, in 1884, at the age of sixty-one, his brilliant research had been nearly forgotten, and he had received no recognition for it.

Mendel’s work was not rediscovered until the year 1900, when three different scientists (a Dutchman, Hugo, de Vries; a German, Carl Correns; and an Austrian, Erich von Tschermak), working independently discovered Mendel’s Laws; each, before publishing his results, had researched the literature and come across Mendel’s original article; and each carefully cited Mendel’s paper and stated that his own work confirmed Mendel’s conclusions. An astounding triple coincidence! Moreover, in that same year, William Bateson, an English scientist, came across Mendel’s original article and promptly drew it to the attention of other scientists. By the end of the year, Mendel was receiving the acclaim that he had so richly deserved during his lifetime.

What were the facts about heredity that Mendel discovered? In the first place, Mendel learned that in all living organisms there were basic units, today called genes, by which inherited characteristics were transmitted from parent to offspring. In the plants that Mendel studied, each individual characteristic, such as seed color or leaf shape, was determined by a pair from each parent. Mendel found that if the two genes inherited for a given trait were different (for example, one gene for green seeds and another gene for yellow seeds) then, normally, only the effect of the dominant gene (in this case for yellow seeds) would manifest itself in that individual. Nevertheless, the recessive gene was not destroyed and might be transmitted to the plant’s descendants. Mendel realized that each reproductive cell or gamete (corresponding to sperm or egg cells in human beings) contained only one gene of each pair. He also stated that it was completely a matter of chance which gene of each pair occurred in an individual gamete and was transmitted to an individual offspring. Mendel’s laws, although they have been modified slightly, remain the starting point of the modern science of genetics. However is it that Mendel, an amateur scientist, was able to discover those important principles that had eluded so many eminent professional biologists before him? Fortunately, he had selected for his investigations a species of plant whose most striking characteristics are each determined by a single set of genes. Had the characteristics he investigated each been determined by several sets of genes, his research would have been immensely more difficult. But this piece of good luck would not have helped Mendel had he not been an extremely careful and patient experimenter nor would it have helped him had he not realized that it was necessary to make a statistical analysis of his observations. Because of the random factor mentioned above, it is generally not possible to predict which traits an individual offspring will inherit. Only by performing a large number of experiments (Mendel had recorded results for over 21,000 individual plants!), and by analyzing his results statistically was Mendel able to deduce his laws.

It is obvious that the laws of heredity are an important addition to human knowledge, and our knowledge of genetics will probably have even more applications in the future than it has had so far. There is, however, another factor to be considered when deciding where Mendel should be placed. Since his discoveries were ignored during his lifetime, and his conclusions were rediscovered independently by later scientists, Mendel’s research might be deemed expendable. If that argument is pushed to its limit, one might conclude that Mendel should be left off this list entirely, just as Leif Ericson, Aristarchus, and Ignaz Semmelweiss have been omitted in favor of Columbus, Copernicus, and Joseph Lister.

There are, however, differences between Mendel’s case and the others. Mendel’s work was forgotten only briefly, and once rediscovered, quickly became widely known. Furthermore, de Vries, Correns, and Tschermak, though they rediscovered his principles independently, eventually did read his paper and cite his results. Finally, one cannot rightly say that Mendel’s work would have had no influence if de Vries, Correns, and Tschermak had never lived. Mendel’s article had already been included in a widely circulated bibliography (by W.O. Focke) of works on heredity. That listing ensured that sooner or later some serious student in the field would come across Mendel’s article. It might be noted that none of the other three scientists ever claimed credit for the discovery of genetics; also, the scientific principles discovered are universally referred to as “Mendel’s Laws.”

Mendel’s discoveries seem comparable, both in originality and importance, with Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood, and he has been ranked accordingly.

The Most Influencial People in the World: MAX PLANCK (1858-1947)

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In December 1900, the German physicist Max Planck startled the scientific world with his bold hypothesis that radiant energy (that is, the energy of light waves) is not emitted in a continuous flow, but rather consists of small chunks or lumps, which he called quanta. Planck’s hypothesis, which conflicted with the classical theories of light and electromagnetism, provided the starting point for the quantum theories which have since revolutionized physics and provided us with a deeper understanding of the nature of matter and radiation.

Planck was born in 1858, in Kiel, Germany. He studied in the Universities of Berlin and Munich, and received his doctor’s degree in physics (summa cum laude) from the University of Munich when he was twenty-one years old. For a while he taught at the University of Munich, and then at Kiel University. In 1889, he became a professor at the University of Berlin, where he remained until his retirement in 1928, at the age of seventy.

Planck, like several other scientists, was interested in the subject of black body radiation, which is the name given to the electromagnetic radiation emitted by a perfectly black object when it is heated. (A perfectly black object is defined as one that does not reflect any light, but completely absorbs all light falling on it.) Experimental physicists had already made careful measurements of the radiation emitted by such objects, even before Planck started working on the problem. Planck’s first achievement was his discovery of the fairly complicated algebraic formula that correctly describes the black body radiation. This formula, which is frequently used in theoretical physics today, nearly summarized the experimental data. But there was a problem: the accepted laws of physics predicted a quite different formula.

Planck pondered deeply on this problem and finally came up with a radically new theory: radiant energy is only emitted in exact multiples of an elementary unit that Planck called the quantum. According to Planck’s theory, the magnitude of a quantum of light depends on the frequency of the light (i.e., on its color), and is also proportional to a physical quantity that Planck abbreviated h, but that is now called Planck’s constant. Planck’s hypothesis was quite contrary to the then prevalent concepts of physics; however, by using it he was able to find an exact theoretical derivation of the correct formula for black body radiation.

Planck’s hypothesis was so revolutionary that it doubtless would have been dismissed as a crackpot idea, had not Planck been well-known as a solid, conservative physicist. Although the hypothesis sounded very strange, in this particular case it did lead to the correct formula.

At first, most physicists (including Planck himself) regarded his hypothesis as no more than a convenient mathematical fiction. After a few years, though, it turned out that Planck’s concept of the quantum could be applied to various physical phenomena other than black body radiation. Einstein used the concept in 1905 to explain the photoelectric effect, and Niels Bohr used it in 1913 in his theory of atomic structure. By 1918, when Planck was awarded the Nobel Prize, it was clear that his hypothesis was basically correct, and that it was of fundamental importance in physical theory.

Planck’s strong anti-Nazi views placed him in considerable danger during the Hitler era. His younger son was executed in early 1945 for his role in the unsuccessful officers’ plot to assassinate Hitler. Planck himself died in 1947, at the age of eighty-nine.

The development of quantum mechanics is probably the most important scientific development of the twentieth century, more important even than Einstein’s theories of relativity. Planck’s constant, h, plays a vital role in physical theory, and is now recognized as one of the two or three most fundamental physical constants. It appears in the theory of atomic structure, in Heisenberg’s formulas. Planck’s original estimate of its numerical value was within 2 percent of the figure accepted today.

Planck is generally considered to be the father of quantum mechanics. Although he played little part in the later development of the theory, it would be a mistake to rank Planck too low. The initial breakthrough which he provided was very important. It freed men’s minds from their earlier misconceptions, and it thereby enabled his successors to construct the far more elegant theory we have today.

The Most Influencial People in the World: JOSEPH LISTER (1827-1912)

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Joseph Lister, the British surgeon who introduced the use of antiseptic measures in surgery, was born in 1827, in Upton, England. In 1852, he received a medical degree from University College in London, where he had been an excellent student. In 1861, he became surgeon at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, a position he was to hold for eight years. It was primarily during this period that he developed his method of antiseptic surgery.

At the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, Lister was in charge of the wards in the new surgical block. He was appalled by the high rate of postoperative mortality that occurred there. Serious infections, such as gangrene, were a common aftermath of surgery. Lister tried to keep his wards generally clean; however, this did not prove sufficient to prevent a high mortality rate. Many doctors maintained that “miasmas” (noxious vapors) about the hospital were the cause of these infections. However, this explanation did not satisfy Lister.

Then, in 1865, he read a paper by Louis Pasteur, which introduced him to the germ theory of disease. This provided Lister with his key idea. If infections were caused by microbes would be to kill the microbes of preventing postoperative infections would be to kill the microbes before they got into the open wound. Using carbolic acid as a germ-killer, Lister instituted a new set of antiseptic procedures. He not only cleaned his hands carefully before every operation, but made sure that the instruments and the dressings that were used also rendered completely sanitary. Indeed, for a while he even sprayed carbolic acid into the air in the operating room. The result was a dramatic drop in postoperative fatalities. During the period 1861-1865, the postoperative mortality rate in the male accident ward had been 45 percent. By 1869, it had been reduced to 15 percent.

Lister’s first great paper on antiseptic surgery was published in 1867. His ideas were not immediately accepted. However, he was offered the chair of Clinical Surgery at Edinburg University in 1869, and during his seven-year stay there his fame spread. In 1875, he toured Germany, lecturing on his ideas and methods; the following year, he made a similar tour in the United States. But the majority of doctors were not yet convinced.

In 1877, Lister was given the Chair of Clinical Surgery at King’s College in London, a position that he held for over fifteen years. His demonstrations of antiseptic surgery in London aroused great interest in medical circles, and resulted in increased acceptance of his ideas. By the end of his life, Lister’s principles of antiseptic surgery had won virtually universal acceptance among physicians.

Lister received many honors for his pioneering work. He was president of the Royal Society for five years, and was Queen Victoria’s personal surgeon. Married, but childless, Lister lived to be almost eighty-five. He died in 1912, in Walmer, England.

Lister’s innovations have completely revolutionized the field of surgery, and have saved many millions of lives. Not only do far fewer people die today from postoperative infections, but today surgery saves many persons who would be unwilling to undergo operations if the danger of infection were as great now as it was a century ago. Furthermore, surgeons are now able to undertake complicated operations that they would never have attempted in earlier days, when the risk of infection was so great. A century ago, for example, operations that involved opening the chest cavity were not normally contemplated. Although present-day techniques of aseptic surgery are different from the antiseptic methods that Lister used, they involve the same basic ideas, and are an extension of Lister’s principles.

One might claim that Lister’s ideas were such obvious corollaries of Pasteur are that Lister is not entitled to any significant credit. However, despite Pasteur’s writings, someone was required to develop and popularize the techniques of antiseptic surgery. Nor does the inclusion of both Lister and Pasteur in this book amount to counting the same discovery twice. The applications of the germ theory of disease are of such significance that, even when the credit is divided up, Pasteur, Leeuwenhoek, Fleming and Lister all are fully entitled to a place on this list.

There is another possible objection to Lister’s is being placed so high on this list. Almost twenty years before Lister did his work, the Hungarian doctor, Ignaz Semmelweiss (1818-1865), working in the Vienna General hospital, had clearly demonstrated the advantages of antiseptic procedures, both in obstetrics and in surgery. However, although Semmelweiss became a professor and wrote an excellent book setting forth his ideas, he was by and large ignored. It was Joseph Lister whose writings, talks, and demonstrations actually convinced the medical profession of the necessity for antiseptic procedures in medical practice.

The Most Influencial People in the World: NIKOLAUS AUGUST OTTO (1832-1891)

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Nikolaus August Otto was the German inventor who, in 1876, built the German inventor who, in 1876, built the first four-stroke internal combustion engine, the proto-type of the hundreds of millions that have been built since then.

The internal combustion engine is a versatile device: it is used to power motorboats and motorcycles; it has had many industrial applications; and it was the vital requisite for the invention of the airplane. (Until the first jet plane flew, in 1939, virtually all aircraft were powered by internal combustion engines working on the Otto cycle.) However, by far the most important use of the internal combustion engine is to power automobiles.

There had been many attempts to construct automobiles before Otto developed his engine. Some inventors, such as Seigfried Marcus (in 1875), Etienne Lenoir (in 1862), and Nicolas Joseph Cugnot (about 1769), had even succeeded in building models that ran. But lacking a suitable type of engine—one capable of combining low weight with high power—none of those models was practical. However, within fifteen years of the invention of Otto’s four-stroke engine, two different inventors, Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler, each constructed practical, marketable automobiles. Various other types have since been used to power automobiles, and it is quite possible that in the future, cars powered by steam, or by electric batteries, or by some other device, will ultimately prove superior. But of the hundreds of millions of cars built in the past century, 99 percent have used the four-stroke internal combustion engine. (The Diesel engine, an ingenious form of internal combustion engine which is used to power many trucks, buses, and ships, employs a four stroke cycle basically similar to Otto’s, but the fuel is admitted at a different stage.)

The great majority of scientific inventions (with the important exceptions of weapons and explosives) are generally conceded to be beneficial to mankind. It is rare, of example, that anyone suggests that we abandon refrigerators or penicillin, or that we seriously restrict their use. The drawbacks of the widespread use of private automobiles, however, are glaringly obvious. They are noisy, they cause air pollution, they consume scarce fuel resources, and each year they cause a ghastly toll of dead and injured persons.

Clearly, we would never consider putting up with the automobile if it did not provide us with enormous advantages as well. Private automobiles are infinitely more flexible than public transportation. Unlike railroads and subway trains, for example, a private automobile will leave whenever you wish, will take you wherever you want to go, and will provide door-to-door service. It is fast, comfortable, and carries luggage easily. By providing we with an unprecedented degree of choice about where we live and how we spend our time, it has considerably increased individual freedom.

Whether all these advantages are worth the price that the automobile exacts from society may be debatable, but no one denies that the automobile has had a major impact on our civilization. In the United States alone there are over 180 million cars in use. Together, they account for approximately three trillion passenger miles a year—more than the combined mileage traveled on foot, in airplanes, in trains, in boats, and by all other forms of transportation.

To accommodate the automobile, we have built acres of parking lots and endless miles of superhighways, altering the whole landscape in the process. In return, the automobile provides us with a mobility scarcely dreamed of by earlier generations. Most car owners now have a vastly larger range of activities and facilities readily available than they could possibly have had without the automobile. It widens our choice of where we work and where we can live. Thanks to the automobile, numerous facilities that previously were only available to urban dwellers are now available to those who live in the suburbs. (This has perhaps been the principal underlying cause of the growth of the suburbs in recent decades and the concomitant decline of the inner cities in the United States.)

Nikolaus August Otto was born in 1832, in the town of Holzhausen, in Germany. His father died when he was an infant. Otto was a good student; however, he dropped out of high school at the age of sixteen to get a job and to gain business experience. For a while, he worked in a grocery store in a small town. Later, he was a clerk in Frankfurt. After that, he became a traveling salesman.

About 1860, Otto heard of the gas engine recently invented by Etienne Lenoir (1822-1900), the first workable internal combustion engine. Otto realized that the Lenoir engine would have many more applications if it could run on liquid fuel, since in that case it would not have to be attached to a gas outlet. Otto soon devised a carburetor; his patent application was denied by the patent office, however, because similar devices had already been invented.

Undiscouraged, Otto devoted his efforts to improving the Lenoir engine. As early as 1861, he hit upon the idea of a basically new type of engine, one operating on a four-stroke cycle (unlike Lenoir’s primitive engine which operated on a two-stroke cycle). In January 1862, Otto built a working model of his four-stroke engine. But he ran into difficulties, especially with the ignition, in making this new engine practical, and soon put it aside. Instead, he developed his atmospheric engine,” an improved two-stroke engine, which ran on gas. He patented it in 1863, and soon found a partner, Eugene Langen, to finance him. They built a small factory, and continued to improve the engine. In 1867, their two-stroke engine won a gold medal at the Paris World’s Fair. Thereafter, sales were brisk, and the company’s profits soared. In 1872, they hired Gottlieb Daimler, a brilliant engineer with experience in factory management, to help produce their engine.

Although profits from the two-stroke engine were good, Otto could not get out of his mind the four-stroke engine that he had conceived originally. He was convinced that a four-stroke engine, which compressed the mixture of fuel and air before igniting it, could be much more efficient than any modification of Lenoir’s two-stroke engine. In early 1876, Otto finally devised an improved ignition system, and with it was able to construct a practical four stroke engine. The first such model was built in May 1876, and a patent was granted the following year. The superior efficiency and performance of the four-stroke engine were obvious, and it was an immediate commercial success. Over 30,000 were sold in the next ten years alone, and all versions of the Lenoir engine soon became obsolete.

Otto’s German patent on his four-stroke engine was overturned in 1886 in a patent suit. It turned out that a Frenchman, Alphonse Beau de Rochas, had thought of a basically similar device in 1862, and had patented it. (One should not, however, think of Beau de Rochas as an influential figure. His invention was never marketed, and, indeed, he never built a single model. Nor did Otto get the idea of his invention from him.) Despite the loss of the valuable patent, Otto’s firm continued to make money. When he died, in 1891, he was prosperous.

Meanwhile, in 1882, Gottlieb Daimler left the firm. He was determined to adopt the Otto engine for vehicular use. By 1883, he had developed a superior ignition system (not, however, the one in general use today), which enabled the engine to operate at 700-900 revolutions per minute. (Otto’s models had a top speed of 180-200 rpm.) Furthermore, Daimler took pains to construct a very light engine. In 1885, he attached one of his engines to bicycle, thereby constructing the world’s first motorcycle. The following year, Daimler constructed his first four-wheel automobile. It turned out, though; that Karl Benz had beat him to the punch. Karl Benz had built his first automobile—a three-wheeler, but undeniably an automobile—just a few months earlier.

Benz’s car, like Daimler’s, was powered by a version of Otto’s four-stroke engine. Benz’s engine ran at well under 400 rpm, but that was enough to make his automobile practical. Benz steadily improved his automobile, and within a few years he succeeded in marketing it. Gottlieb Daimler started marketing his cars a bit later than Benz, but he, too, was successful. (Eventually, the Benz and Daimler firms merged together. The famous Mercedes-Benz automobile is manufactured by the resulting firm.)

One more figure in the development of the automobile must be mentioned: the American inventor and industrialist, Henry Ford, who was the first to mass-produce inexpensive automobiles.

The internal combustion engine and the automobile were inventions of staggering importance, and if a single person were entitled to exclusive credit for them he would rank near the top of this list. The principal credit for these inventions must, however, is divided among several men: Lenoir, Otto, Daimler, Benz, and Ford. Of all these men, Otto made the most significant contribution. The Lenoir engine was intrinsically neither powerful nor efficient enough to power automobiles. Otto’s engine was. Before 1876, when Otto invented his engine, development of a practical automobile was almost impossible; after 1876, it was virtually inevitable. Nikolaus August Otto is, therefore, one of the true makers of the modern world.

The Most Influencial People in the World: FRANCISCO PIZARRO (C. 1475-1541)

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Francisco Pizarro, the illiterate Spanish adventurer who conquered the Inca Empire in Peru, was born about 1475, in the city of Trujillo, Spain. Like Hernando Cortes, whose career parallels his in many ways, Pizarro came to the New World to seek fame and fortune. From 1502 to 1509, Pizarro lived on Hispaniola, the Caribbean island on which Haiti and the Dominican Republic are now situated. In 1513, he was a member of the expedition, led by Vasco Nunez de Balboa, which discovered the Pacific Ocean. In 1519, he settled in Panama. In 1522, when Pizarro was about forty-seven years old, he learned of the existence of the Inca Empire from Pasqual de Andagoya, a Spanish explorer who had visited it. Pizarro, doubtless inspired by the recent conquest of Mexico by Hernando Cortes, decided to conquer the Inca Empire. His first attempt, in 1524-25, was unsuccessful, and his two ships had to turn back before reaching Peru. On his second attempt, 1526-28, he managed to reach the coast of Peru and return with gold, Llamas, and Indians.

In 1528, he returned to Spain. There, the following year, the emperor Charles V authorized him to conquer Peru for Spain, and supplied him with funds for an expedition. Pizarro returned to Panama, where he assembled the expedition. It sailed from Panama in 1531, at which time Pizarro was already fifty-six years old. The force which he had assembled included fewer than 200 men, while the empire that he had set out to conquer had a population of over six million!

Pizarro reached the coast of Peru the following year. In September 1532, taking with him only 177 men and 62 horses, he marched inland. Pizarro led his small force high into the Andes Mountains to reach the town of Cajamarca, where the Incan ruler, Atahualpa, was staying with an army of forty thousand warriors. Pizarro’s troops arrived at Cajamarca on November 15, 1532. The following day, at Pizarro’s request, Atahualpa left the bulk of his troops behind, and accompanied only by about five thousand unarmed retainers, came to parley with Pizarro.

In the light of what Atahualpa must have known, his behavior is baffling. From the time that they had first landed on the coast, the Spaniards had plainly demonstrated both their hostile intent and their utter ruthlessness. It is therefore hard to understand why Atahualpa. Had the Indians attacked him on the narrow mountain roads, where Pizarro reached Cajamarca was still more amazing. To approach a hostile army while he unarmed was incredibly stupid. The mystery is only heightened by the fact that ambush was a common tactic of the Incas.

Pizarro did not let his golden opportunity pass. He ordered his troops to attack Atahualpa and his unarmed escort. The battle—or rather massacre—lasted only about half an hour. Not a single Spanish soldier was killed; the only one wounded was Pizarro himself, who suffered a minor would while protecting Atahualpa, whom he succeeded in capturing alive.

Pizarro’s strategy worked perfectly. The Inca Empire was a highly centralized structure, with all authority flowing from the Inca, or emperor, who was believed to be semi-divine. With the Inca held prisoner, the Indians were unable to react to the Spanish invasion. In the hope of regaining his freedom, Atahualpa paid Pizarro an enormous ransom in gold and silver, probably worth more than 28 million dollars. Nevertheless, within a few months Pizarro had him executed. In November 1533, a year after the capture of Atahualpa, Pizarro’s troops entered the Inca capital, Cuzco, without a fight. There, Pizarro installed a new Inca as his puppet. In 1535, he founded the city of Lima, which became the new capital of Peru.

In 1536, however, the puppet Inca escaped and led an Indian revolt against the Spanish. For a while the Spanish forces were besieged in Lima and Cuzco. The Spanish managed to regain control of most of the country the following year, but it was not until 1572 that the revolt was finally crushed. By then, however, Pizarro himself was dead.

Pizarro’s downfall came about because the Spanish started fighting among themselves. One of Pizarro’s closest associates, Diego de Almagro, revolted in 1537, claiming that Pizarro was not giving him his rightful share of the booty. Almagro was captured and executed; but the issue was not really settled, and in 1541, a group of Almagro’s followers broke into Pizarro’s palace in Lima and assassinated the sixty-six-year-old leader, only eight years after he had entered Cuzco victoriously.

Francisco Pizarro was brave, determined, and shrewd. By his own lights, he was a religious man, and it is reported that the dying Pizarro drew a cross on the ground with his own blood, and that his last word was “Jesus.” However, he was also an incredibly avaricious man, cruel, ambitious, and treacherous: perhaps the most brutal of the conquistadors.

But Pizarro’s harsh character should not blind us to the magnitude of his military achievement. When, in 1967, the Israelis won a dramatic victory over Arab nations which greatly outnumbered them, and which possessed far more military equipment, many persons were surprised. It was an impressive triumph; but history is studded with examples of military victories won against sizable numerical odds. Napoleon and Alexander the Great repeatedly won victories against larger armies. The Mongols, under the successors of Genghis Khan, managed to conquer China, a country which had at least thirty times their population.

However, Pizarro’s conquest of an empire of over six million with a force of only 180 men is the most astonishing military feat in history. The numerical odds he overcame were considerably higher than those which faced Cortes, who invaded an empire of roughly five million with a force of 600 men. Could even Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan have matched Pizarro’s accomplishment? I doubt it, since neither of them would ever have been so reckless as to attempt a conquest when faced with such overwhelming odds.

But, one might ask, did not Spanish firearms give them an overwhelming tactical advantage? Not at all. Arquebuses, the primitive firearms of the time, had a small range and took a long time to reload. Although they made a frightening noise, they were actually less effective than food bows and arrows. In any event, when Pizarro entered Cajamarca, only three of his men had Arquebuses, and no more than twenty had crossbows. Most of the Indians were killed by conventional weapons such as swords and spears. Despite their possession of a few horses and firearms, it is plain that the Spanish entered the conflict at an overwhelming military disadvantage. Leadership and determination, rather than weaponry, were the chief factors in the Spanish victory. Of course, Pizarro had good luck as well; but it is an old saying that fortune favors the brave.

Francisco Pizarro had been condemned by some writers as little more than a courageous thug. But few if any thugs have had his impact on history. The empire which he overthrew ruled most of present-day Peru and Ecuador, as well as the northern half of Chile, and part of Bolivia. Its population was considerably larger than all the rest of South America combined. As a result of Pizarro’s conquests, the religion and culture of Spain were imposed on the entire region. Furthermore, after the fall of the Inca Empire, no other part of South America had any chance of successfully resisting European conquest. Millions of Indians still inhabit South America. But in most parts of the continent the Indians have never regained political power, and European language, religion, and culture remain dominant.

Cortes and Pizarro, each leading only small forces, succeeded in rather quickly overthrowing the empires of the Aztecs and the Incas. This has led many people to suspect that the conquest of Mexico and Peru by Europeans was inevitable. Indeed, it does seem that the Aztec Empire had no real chance of maintaining its independence. Its location (near the Gulf of Mexico, and a comparatively short sail from Cuba) left it vulnerable to Spanish attack. Even if the Aztecs had succeeded in defeating Cortes’s small forces, larger Spanish armies were sure to follow fairly soon.

The Inca Empire, on the other hand, was far better situated for defense. The only ocean bordering it was the Pacific, which was less accessible to Spanish ships than the Atlantic. The Incas maintained large armies, and their empire was populous and well organized. Furthermore, the terrain of Peru is rugged and mountainous, and in many sections of the world, the European colonial powers found it very difficult to conquer mountainous regions. Even in the late nineteenth century, when European arms were far more advanced than they had been in the early sixteenth century, an Italian attempt to conquer Ethiopia was unsuccessful. Similarly, the British had almost endless difficulties with the tribes on the mountainous northwest frontier of India. And the Europeans were never able to colonize such mountainous countries as Nepal, Afghanistan, and Iran. Had Pizarro’s invasion failed, and had the Incas thereby had the opportunity to gain some knowledge of European weapons and tactics, they might well have been able to fight off substantially larger European forces afterwards. As it was, it took the Spanish thirty-six years to suppress the Indian revolt of 1536, even though the Indians had very few guns and were never able to muster more than a small fraction of the troops which they could have assembled before Pizarro’s conquest. The Spanish might have conquered the Inca Empire even without Pizarro, but that conclusion seems far from certain.

Thus, Pizarro has been ranked slightly higher than Cortes on this list. Cortes speeded up history; Pizarro may possibly have altered its course.

The Most Influencial People in the World: HERNANDO CORTES (1485-1547)

2010-06-26T00:56:00.000+05:30

Hernando Cortes, the conqueror of Mexico, was born in 1485, in Medellin, Spain. His father was a minor noble. In his youth, Cortes attended the University of Salamanca, where he studied law. At the age of nineteen, he left Spain to seek his fortune in the newly-discovered Western Hemisphere. He arrived in Hispaniola in 1504, and spent several years there as a gentleman farmer and local Don Juan. In 1511, he took part in the Spanish conquest of Cuba. Following this adventure, he married the sister-in-law of the Imperial Governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez, and was appointed mayor of Santiago.

In 1518, Velasquez chose Cortes to be the captain of an expedition to Mexico. The governor, fearing Cortes ambition, soon reversed his order, but it was too late to stop Cortes. He sailed in February 1519, with 11 ships, 110 sailors, 553 soldiers (including only 13 with hand guns and 32 with crossbows), 10 heavy cannons, 4 light cannons, and 16 horses. The expedition disembarked on Good Friday at the site of the present city of Veracruz. Cortes remained near the coast for a while, gathering information about the situation in Mexico. He learned that the Aztecs, who ruled Mexico, had a great capital which lay inland; that they had great stores of precious metals; and that they were hated by many of the other Indian tribes whom they had subdued.

Cortes, who was bent on conquest, decided to march inland and invade the Aztec territory. Some of his men were frightened by the enormous numerical odds which they would have to overcome; so before marching inland, Cortes destroyed the expedition’s boats, thus leaving his men no choice but to either follow him to victory or be killed by the Indians.

Proceeding inland, the Spaniards encountered fierce resistance from the Tlaxcala’s, and independent tribe of Indians. But after their large army had been defeated by the Spanish in some hard-fought battles, the Tlaxcala’s decided to join forces with Cortes against the Aztecs, whom they hated. Cortes then advanced to Cholula, where the Aztec ruler, Montezuma II, had planned a surprise attack on the Spanish. However, Cortes, who had obtained advance information of the Indians’ intentions, struck first, and massacred thousands of them at Cholula. He then advanced toward the capital, Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), and on November 8, 1519, entered the city without opposition. He soon imprisoned Montezuma, whom he made a puppet, and it looked as though the conquest was almost complete.

But then another Spanish force, under Pan Filo de Narvaez, arrived on the coast with orders to arrest Cortes. Cortes left some of his forces in Tenochtitlan, and hastily led the rest of his troops back to the coast. There, he defeated the troops of Narvaez and persuaded the survivors to join him. However, by the time he was able to return to Tenochtitlan, the subordinate whom he had left there had antagonized the Aztecs beyond endurance. On June 30, 1520, there was an uprising in Tenochtitlan, and the Spanish forces, suffering severe causalities, retreated to Tlaxcala. However, Cortes obtained additional troops, and the following May he returned and laid siege to Tenochtitlan. The city fell on August 13. After that, Spanish control of Mexico was reasonably secure, although Cortes had to spend some time consolidating the conquest of the outlying regions. Tenochtitlan was rebuilt and renamed Mexico City, and it became the capital of the Spanish colony of New Spain.

Considering the small number of troops with which Cortes started, his conquest of an empire of five million was a truly remarked military feat. The only example in history of a conquest against greater numerical odds is that of Francisco Pizarro over the Incas in Peru. It is natural to be curious about how and why Cortes succeeded. Certainly, his possession of horses and firearms was a factor; however, the very small numbers of those which he possessed were not in themselves nearly sufficient compensation for his enormous numerical disadvantage. (It is worth noting that neither of the two previous Spanish expeditions to the Mexican coast had succeeded in establishing a settlement or in making any permanent conquests.) Certainly, the leadership which Cortes provided, and his courage and determination were major factors in his success. An equally important factor was his skillful diplomacy. Cortes not only avoided inspiring an Indian coalition against him, but he successfully persuaded substantial numbers of Indians to join with him against the Aztecs.

Cortes was also aided by Aztec legends concerning the god Quetzalcoatl. According to Indian legend, this god had instructed the Indians in agriculture, metallurgy, and government; he had been tall, with white skin, and a flowing beard. After promising to revisit the Indians, he had departed over the “Eastern Ocean,” that is, the Gulf of Mexico. To Montezuma, it seemed very possible that Cortes was the returning god, and this fear seems to have markedly influenced his behavior. Certainly, Montezuma’s reaction to the Spanish invasion was weak and indecisive.

One last factor in the Spaniards’ success was their religious fervor. To us, of course, Cortes’s invasion seems an inexcusable act of aggression. Cortes, however, was convinced that his invasion was morally justified. He could, and did, quite sincerely tell his men that they would win because their cause was just, and because they were fighting under the banner of the Cross. Cortes’s religious motivation was quite sincere: more than once, he risked the success of his expedition by heavy-handed attempts to convert his Indian allies to Christianity.

Although Cortes was an excellent diplomat when dealing with the Indians, he was not equally successful in the political infighting with his Spanish rivals. The Spanish king rewarded him richly with lands and made Cortes a marquis, but removed him from his post as Governor of Mexico. Cortes returned to Spain in 1540, and spent the last seven years of his life vainly petitioning the king to restore his authority in New Spain. When Cortes died, in 1547, near Seville, Spain, he was an embittered though wealthy man. His large estates in Mexico were inherited by his son.

That Cortes was greedy and ambitious is obvious. An admirer who knew Cortes personally described him as ruthless, haughty, mischievous, and quarrelsome. But Cortes had many admirable qualities as well. He was courageous, determined, and intelligent. He had a generally cheerful disposition. Though a firm military leader, he was not wantonly cruel. Unlike Pizarro, who was universally hated, Cortes got along well with many of the Indians and tried not to govern them harshly. Incidentally, Cortes was apparently handsome and charming; he was always a great ladies’ man.

In his will, Cortes stated that he was uncertain whether it was morally right to own Indian slaves. The question had troubled him, and he requested his son to consider the matter carefully. For his times, this was a rare attitude; one can hardly conceive of Francisco Pizarro (or Christopher Columbus), being troubled by such a question. All in all, one gets the impression that of all the Spanish conquistadors, Cortes was the most decent human being.

Cortes and Pizarro were born within fifty miles of each other, and only about tem years apart. The achievements of the two men (who appear to have been relatives) are strikingly similar. Between them, they conquered a region of virtually continental size, and imposed on that region the language, religion, and culture of the conquerors. Throughout most of that region, political power has ever since remained with person of European ancestry.

The combined influence of Cortes and Pizarro was considerably greater than that of Simon Bolivar. Their conquests transferred political power in South America from the Indians to the Europeans. Bolivar’s victories merely succeeded in transferring power from the Spanish government to persons of European ancestry born in South America.

It might seem, at first that Cortes should be ranked higher than Pizarro because his conquests took place earlier and inspired those of Pizarro. Furthermore, Indians resistance in Peru had not ended when Pizarro died, whereas Cortes essentially completed the conquest of Mexico. But in my opinion, those points are slightly overbalanced by another consideration. The conquering zeal of the Spanish, and the superiority of their weapons, obviously posed a serious threat to both the Aztecs and the Incas. Peru, protected by its mountainous terrain, had some chance of retaining its independence. Pizarro’s bold and successful attack man, therefore, actually have changed the course of history.

But the Aztec dominions were less mountainous than Peru; furthermore, Mexico (unlike Peru) borders on a portion of the Atlantic Ocean and was therefore relatively accessible to Spanish forces. It therefore appears that the conquest of Mexico by Spain was virtually inevitable: the principal result of Cortes’s daring and able leadership was to hasten the process.

The Most Influencial People in the World: THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743-1826)

2010-06-26T00:52:00.000+05:30

Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States of America, and the author of the Declaration of Independence, was born in 1743, in Shadwell, Virginia. His father was a surveyor and a successful planter who eventually left a large estate to his son. Jefferson attended the College of William and Mary for two years, but left without receiving a degree. Afterward, he studied law for several years, and in 1767, he was admitted to the Virginia bar. Jefferson spent the next seven years as a practicing lawyer and a planter. He also became a member of the House of Burgesses, the lower house of the Virginia legislature.

Jefferson’s first important essay, A Summary View of the Rights of British America, was written in 1774. The following year, he was chosen as one of Virginia’s delegates to the Second Continental Congress, and in 1776, he returned to the Virginia legislature, where he played a leading role in the adoption of several major reforms. Two of his important proposals were the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom and a Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge, which concerned public education.

Jefferson’s proposals on education included: public elementary education available to all; a state university in which the more gifted could receive a higher education; and a system of scholarships. His educational plan was not adopted by the state of Virginia at that time, although similar plans were later instituted by virtually all the states.

The statute concerning religious liberty is noteworthy in that it provided for complete religious toleration and for the complete separation of Church and State. (Previously, the Anglican Church had been the established church in Virginia.) There was considerable opposition to Jefferson’s proposal, but it was eventually passed by the Virginia legislature (1786). The same ideas were soon adopted in the bills of rights of other states, and later in the United States Constitution as well.

Jefferson served as governor of Virginia from 1779 to 1781. He then “retired” from political life. During his retirement, he wrote his only book, Notes on the State of Virginia. The book contains, among other things, a clear statement of Jefferson’s opposition to the institution of slavery. In 1782, Jefferson’s wife died. (They had been married ten years and had six children.) Though he was still fairly young, Jefferson never remarried.

Jefferson soon came out of retirement and entered Congress. There, a proposal of his for a decimal system of coinage was adopted. However, a similar proposal of his for a decimal system of weight and measures (this was before the metric system had been devised) was not approved. He also introduced a proposal which would have prohibited slavery in all new states; however it was defeated by a single vote.

In 1784, Jefferson went to France on a diplomatic mission. There, he soon succeeded Benjamin Franklin as the American ambassador. He stayed in France for five years, and was therefore absent from the United States during the entire period in which the United States Constitution was drafted and ratified. Jefferson favored adopted believed that a bill of rights should be included.

Jefferson returned to American in late 1789, and was soon appointed the country’s first Secretary of State. Within the Cabinet, a clash soon developed between Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, who was Secretary of the Treasury and whose political outlook was quite different from Jefferson’s. In the nation, supporters of Hamilton’s policies eventually came together to form the Federalist Party. Supporters of Jefferson’s policies joined together to form the Democratic - Republican Party, which eventually became known as the Democratic Party.

In 1796, Jefferson was a moderate and conciliatory towards his former opponents, thereby setting a valuable precedent for the United States. From the standpoint of lasting effect, the most notable governmental action during his term in office was the Louisiana Purchase, which roughly doubled the area of the United States. The Louisiana Purchase, perhaps the largest peaceful transfer of territory in recorded history, helped turn the United States into a great power, and was an event of far-reaching importance. If I thought that Thomas Jefferson were the person principally responsible for the Louisiana Purchase, he would be ranked considerably higher on this list. However, I believe that the French leader, Napoleon Bonaparte, by making the crucial decision to sell the territory to the United States, was actually chiefly responsible for the transfer. If any individual American deserves special credit for the Louisiana Purchase, it would not be Jefferson, who had never envisaged such an extensive purchase, but rather the American envoys in Paris, Robert Livingston and James Monroe, who when they saw the opportunity for an extraordinary bargain, exceeded their diplomatic instructions and negotiated the acquisition of the enormous territory. (It is noteworthy that Jefferson, who wrote his own epitaph, did not include the Louisiana Purchase as one of his principal achievements.)

Jefferson was re-elected President in 1804; however, in 1808, he chose not to run for a third term, thereby reinforcing the precedent which George Washington had set. Jefferson retired in 1809, and his only subsequent governmental activity was in connection with the founding of the University of Virginia (chartered in 1819). He thereby saw a portion of the educational program he had suggested to the Virginia legislature forty-three years earlier finally put into practice. Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, after more than eighty-three years of a full and well-spent life.

Jefferson had many other talents besides his obvious political gifts. He knew five or six foreign languages; he was interested in natural science and mathematics; he was a successful planter who engaged in scientific farming. He was also a manufacturer, minor inventor, and skilled architect.

Because Jefferson’s talents and personal qualities were so outstanding, it is easy to overestimate the actual influence he has had on history. In assessing his true importance, we should perhaps start by considering the Declaration of Independence, since drafting that is usually considered to be his outstanding achievement. The first thing to note is that the Declaration of Independence is not part of the governing law of the United States of America; its primary importance is as a statement of American ideals. Furthermore, the ideas expressed in it were not original with Jefferson, but were largely derived from the writings of John Locke. The Declaration was not original philosophy; nor was it intended to be; rather, it was meant to be a concise statement of beliefs already held by many Americans.

Nor was Jefferson’s magnificent phrasing of the Declaration responsible for the American decision to declare independence. The Revolutionary War had actually commenced in April 1775 (more than a year before the Declaration of Independence), with the battles of Lexington and Concord. In the months following those battles, the American colonies faced a critical decision: should they demand outright independence, or should they seek a compromise with the English government? In the spring of 1776, sentiment in the Continental Congress was running strongly toward the former alternative. It was not Jefferson, but rather Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, who on June 7 formally proposed that the colonies declare their independence from Great Britain. The Congress decided to postpone a vote on Lee’s resolution for a few weeks, and appointed a committee, headed by Jefferson, to meanwhile prepare a public statement of the reasons for declaring independence. (The other committee members wisely permitted Jefferson to draft the statement almost singlehandedly. Congress took up Lee’s motion again on July 1, and the following day it was brought to a vote and carried unanimously. It was that vote, on July 2, in which the critical decision in favor of independence was made. It was not until after that vote that the text of Jefferson’s draft was debated. It was adopted by Congress (with some modifications) two days later, on July 4, 1776.

Even if the Declaration of Independence was not really as important as most people think would not Jefferson do other achievements still entitle him to a higher position on this list? In his epitaph, Jefferson mentioned the two other achievements for which he most wished to be remembered. One of those, his role as the founder of the University of Virginia, although certainly very praiseworthy, is hardly of sufficient importance to greatly affect his overall position on this list. The other accomplishment, his authorship of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, is quite significant indeed. Of course, the general idea of religious freedom had been expressed by several prominent philosophers before Jefferson’s statute went considerably further than the policies which had been advocated by Locke. Furthermore, Jefferson was an active politician who succeeded in having his proposals enacted into law, and Jefferson’s proposal influenced other states when they drew up bills of rights.

That brings up another question: to what extent was Thomas Jefferson responsible for the adoption of the Federal Bill of Rights? Jefferson was certainly representative of those persons who wanted to have a bill of rights; indeed, he was one of the intellectual leaders of that group. But Jefferson, who was out of the country from 1784 until late 1789, was unable to lead the fight for a bill of rights during the crucial period immediately following the Constitutional Convention, and it was James Madison who played the principal role in actually getting the amendments through Congress. (Congress passed the amendments on September 25, 1789, before Jefferson returned to the United States.)

It might be said that it was not Jefferson’s official actions, but rather his attitudes, which have most deeply affected the United States. However, it is rather doubtful to what extent Jefferson’s ideas are actually accepted by the American people. Many persons who honor the name of Thomas Jefferson support policies quite contrary to his. For example, Jefferson strongly believed in what we today would call “small government.” A characteristic phrase 9taken from his inaugural address) is, “…a wise and fugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their one pursuit of industry and improvement….”

The preceding paragraphs perhaps make it sound as if Thomas Jefferson had rather little influence, and does not belong in this book at all. But too great a concern with details can sometimes cause one not to see the forest for the trees. If, instead, one step back and tries to view Jefferson’s career as a whole, one can readily see why he has been described as the “preeminent spokesman for human liberty.”

Should Thomas Jefferson be ranked higher or lower than George Washington? American independence and democratic institutions were created by the combined efforts of men of ideas and men of action. While both were essential, I believe that in general the ideas were the more important contribution. On the executive side, George Washington plainly played the dominant role. Credit for the ideas, however, must be divided between a large number of men, including Americans such as Jefferson and James Madison, and Europeans such as John Locke, Voltaire, and many others. It is for that reason that Thomas Jefferson, despite his enormous talents and prestige, has been ranked substantially below George Washington on this list.

The Most Influencial People in the World: QUEEN ISABELLA I (1451-1504)

2010-05-25T00:24:00.000+05:30

Today, most people only remember Isabella I of Castile as the queen who financed Christopher Columbus’s voyage across the Atlantic. In reality, she was an energetic and capable ruler, who made a whole series of crucial decisions which profoundly influenced Spain and Latin America for centuries and which indirectly affect many millions of persons today.

Since most of her policies were decided upon after consultation with her shrewd and equally capable husband, Ferdinand of Aragon, and since they were carried out with his close cooperation, it seems reasonable to consider them as a joint entry in this book. However, Isabella’s name has been chosen to head this article because it was her suggestions which were adopted in their most important decisions.

Isabella was born in 1451, in the town of Madrigal, in the kingdom of Castile (now part of Spain). As a young girl, she received a strict religious training and became a very devout Catholic. Her half-brother, Henry IV, was king of Castile from 1454 until he died, in 1474. At that time, there was no kingdom of Spain. Instead, the present territory of Spain was divided among four kingdoms: Castile, which was the largest; Aragon, in the northeast portion of present-day Spain; Granada, in the south; and Navarre, in the north.

In the late 1460s, Isabella, who was the probable heir to the throne of Castile, was the richest heiress in Europe, and various princes sought her hand. Her half-brother, Henry IV, wished her to marry the king of Portugal. However, in 1469, when she was eighteen years old, Isabella slipped off, and despite the opposition of King Henry, married Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of Aragon. Angered at Isabella’s disobedience, Henry named his daughter Juana to succeed him. Nevertheless, when Henry died, in 1474, Isabella claimed the throne of Castile. The supporters of Juana did not accept this, and a civil war followed. By February 1479, Isabella’s forces were triumphant. King John II of Aragon died that same year, and Ferdinand became the king of Aragon. Thereafter, Ferdinand and Isabella ruled most of Spain together.

In theory, the two kingdoms of Aragon and Castile were still separate, and most of their governmental institutions remained separate. In practice, however, Ferdinand and Isabella made all their decisions together, and to the best of their ability acted as the joint rulers of Spain. Throughout the twenty-five years of their combined rule, their basic policy was to create a unified Spanish kingdom governed by a strong monarchy. One of their first projects was the conquest of Granada, the only portion of the Iberian Peninsula which was still under Moslem rule. The war commenced in 1481; it ended in January 1492, with the complete victory of Ferdinand and Isabella. With the conquest of Granada, Spain assumed almost exactly the same territorial boundaries that it has today. (The small kingdom of Navarre was annexed by Ferdinand in 1512, after Isabella had died.)

Very early in their reign, Ferdinand and Isabella instituted the Spanish Inquisition. The Inquisition was an ecclesiastical tribunal which combined the powers of judge, jury, prosecuting attorney, and police investigators. It was notorious both for the ferocity of its punishments and for the gross unfairness of its procedures. Suspects had little or no opportunity to refute the charges against them. They were not informed of the full testimony against them, or even of the names of their accusers. Suspects who denied the charges brought against them were often subjected the gruesome tortures until they confessed. At a conservative estimate, at least two thousand persons were burnt at the stake during the first twenty years of the Spanish Inquisition, and many times that number received lesser punishments.

The Spanish Inquisition was headed by the ultra-fanatical monk, Tomás de Torquemada, who was the personal confessor of Isabella. Although the Inquisition had been authorized by the Pope, it actually was under the control of the Spanish monarchs. The Inquisition was under partly to establish religious conformity, and partly to stamp out political opposition to the monarchs. In England, the feudal lords always retained enough strength to check the power of the king. The Spanish feudal lords also had once been powerful; however, the Spanish monarchs were able to use the Inquisition as a weapon against defiant feudal lords, and were thereby able to establish a centralized and absolute monarchy. They also used it to gain greater control over the Spanish clergy.

However, the principal targets of the Inquisition were those persons suspected of religious deviation, and in particular, Jews and Moslems who had become nominally converted to Catholicism, but who continued to practice their former religions in secret.

At its inception, the inquisition was not directed against progressing Jews. However, in 1492, at the insistence of the fanatical Torquemada, Ferdinand and Isabella signed a decree ordering all Spanish Jews to either convert to Christianity or leave the country within four months, leaving their property behind. For the roughly 200,000 Spanish Jews, this order of expulsion was a disaster, and many died before reaching a safe haven. For Spain, the loss of a high proportion of the country’s most industrious and skilled tradesmen and artisans proved a severe economic setback.

When Granada had surrendered, the peace treaty provided that the Moslems living in Spain were to be permitted to continue practicing their religion. In fact, however, the Spanish government soon violated this agreement. The Moors therefore rebelled, but were defeated. In 1502, all Moslems living in Spain were forced to choose either conversion to Christianity or exile—the same choice that had been presented to the Jews ten years earlier.

Although Isabella was a devout Catholic, she never permitted her orthodoxy to interfere with her Spanish nationalism. She and Ferdinand struggled hard and successfully to insure that the Catholic Church in Spain was controlled by the Spanish monarchy, rather than by the Pope. This was one of the reasons why the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century never made any headway in Spain.

The most notable event of Isabella’s reign, of course, was the discovery of the new world by Christopher Columbus, which also occurred in the fateful year 1492. Columbus’s expedition was sponsored by the kingdom of Castile. (However, the Story that Isabella had to pawn her jewels to pay for the expedition is not true.)

Isabella died in 1504. During her lifetime, she had given birth to one son and four daughters. The son, Juan, died in 1497. The best known of her daughters was Juana. Ferdinand and Isabella arranged for Juana to marry Philip I (the Handsome), who was the son of the Austrian Hapsburg emperor and was also the heir to the kingdom of Burgundy. As a result of this extraordinary dynastic marriage, Isabella’s grandson, the Emperor Charles V, inherited one of the largest empires in European history. He was also elected Holy Roman Emperor, and was the wealthiest and most powerful European monarch of his time. The territories which he either nominally or actually ruled included Spain, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, most of Italy, and parts of France, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Yugoslavia, in addition to a large portion of the Western Hemisphere. Both Charles V and his son Philip II were ardent Catholics who, during their long reigns, used the wealth of the New World to finance wars against the Protestant states of northern Europe. Thus, the dynastic marriage arranged by Ferdinand and Isabella influenced the history of Europe for almost a century after their deaths.

Let me try to summarize the accomplishments and influence of Ferdinand and Isabella. By their joint efforts, they largely succeeded in creating a United Kingdom of Spain with essentially the same boundaries that Spain has retained for the last five centuries; they created a centralized, absolute monarchy in Spain; the expulsion of the moors and the Jews had important consequences both for the exiles and for Spain herself; and their religious bigotry and establishment of the Inquisition had profound effects on the entire future history of Spain.

This last point merits some discussion. In the simplest terms, one might say that the inquisition placed Spain in an intellectual strait jacket. In the centuries following 1492, most of Western Europe underwent an enormous intellectual and scientific flowering. Not so Spain. In a society where the expression of any deviant thought placed one in danger of arrest by the inquisition, it is not surprising that originality was lacking. Other European countries allowed some diversity of opinion. In Spain, the Inquisition permitted only a rigidly orthodox Catholicism. By 1700, Spain was an intellectual backwater compared with the rest of Western Europe. Indeed, although it is five centuries since Ferdinand and Isabella established the Spanish Inquisition, and over 150 years since the Inquisition was finally abolished, Spain has still not fully recovered from its effects.

Furthermore, Isabella’s sponsorship of Columbus’s expedition insured that most of South and Central America became Spanish colonies. This meant that Spanish culture and institutions—including the inquisition—were established throughout a large portion of the Western Hemisphere. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that just as Spain was intellectually backward compared with most of Western Europe, so the Spanish colonies in South America became intellectually less advanced than the English colonies in North America.

In considering where Isabella should be ranked on this list, one factor to be considered is whether much the same events would have occurred without her. It is true that the crusading spirit was already very strong in Spain, because of the 700-year-long struggle to reconquering the Iberian Peninsula from the Moslems. However, when that struggle ended successfully in 1492, Spain had a choice of directions in which to go. It was Ferdinand and Isabella—particularly Isabella—who set the course of Spain in the direction of uncompromising religious orthodoxy. Without her influence, it seems quite possible that Spain would have remained a reasonably pluralistic society.

It is perhaps natural to compare Isabella with the more famous Queen Elizabeth I of England. Elizabeth of her comparatively humane and tolerant policies, she seems a far more admirable ruler. But she was less of an innovator than Isabella, and none of her actions had as profound an influence as did Isabella establishment of the Inquisition. Although some of Isabella’s policies were quite abhorrent, few monarchs in history have had as far-reaching an influence as she had.

The Most Influencial People in the World: JOSEPH STALIN (1879-1953)

2010-05-25T00:21:00.000+05:30

Stalin, whose original name was Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, was for many years the dictator of the Soviet Union. He was born ìn 1879, in the town of Gori, in Georgia, in the Caucasus. His native language was Georgian—a very different language from Russian, which he learned later, and which he always spoke with a marked Georgian accent.

Stalin was reared in poverty. His father, a cobbler who drank excessively and beat his son brutally, died when Iosif was eleven years old. As a youth, Iosif attended a church school in Gori, and as a teenager, he attended a theological seminary in Tiflis; however, in 1899, he was expelled from the seminary for spreading subversive ideas. He joined the underground Marxist movement, and in 1903, when there was a party split, he sided with the Bolshevik wing. In the years leading up to 1917, he was an active party member, and was arrested at least six times.

(However, since his sentences were generally light, and since he managed to escape on more than one occasion, it seems possible that he was actually a double agent for part of that time.) It was during this period that he adopted the not inappropriate pseudonym “Stalin”(man of steel).

Stalin did not play a really major role in the Communist revolution of 1917. However, he was very active during the next two years, and in 1922, became Secretary General of the Communist Party. This post gave him a great deal of influence in the administration of the party and was a major factor in his success in the struggle for power that occurred after Lenin died.

It is clear that Lenin wished Leon Trotcky to be his successor. In fact, in his political testament, Lenin stated that Stalin was too ruthless and ought to be removed from his post as Secretary General. However after Lenin’s death in early 1924, Stalin succeeded in having Lenin’s testament suppressed. Furthermore, Stalin was able to join forces with Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev, two important members of the Potburo, to form a “troika,” or triumvirate. Together they succeeded in defeating Trotsky and his followers. Then Stalin, a genius at political infighting, turned on Zinoviev and Kamenev and defeated them. Having defeated the “left-wing opposition” (i.e.,Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and their followers) in the power struggle, Stalin proceeded to adopt several of their main political proposals. Not long after that, Stalin turned on the leaders of the right wing of the Communist party—his erstwhile allies—and defeated them too. By the early 1930s, he was the sole dictator of the Soviet Union.

From this position of power, starting in 1934, Stalin unleashed a drastic series of political purges. The event that nominally set off those purge was the assassination, on December 1, 1934, of Sergei Kirov, a high Communist official and one of the Stalin’s advisors. However, it seems quite likely that Stalin himself ordered Kirov’s assassination, party in order to get rid of Kirov, but mostly in order to furnish a pretext for the purges that followed.

In the course of the next few years, a high proportion of the men who had been Communist party leaders during the 1917 Revolution, and under Lenin’s administration, were charged with treason by Stalin and executed. Many of them openly confessed in large public trails. It was as if Thomas Jefferson, while President, had arrested most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, charged them all with treason, and executed them after their “confessions” in public trails. In 1938, the man who had headed the earlier purges, Genrikh Yagoda, was himself brought to trial, confessed to treason, and was duly executed. For that matter, his successor, Nicolai Yezhov, was also eventually purged and executed.

The purges of the mid-1930s extended throughout the Communist party and the Soviet armed forces. They were not directed primarily against anti-Communists or counter-revolutionaries. (Most of those had been crushed during Lenin’s administration.) Rather, they were directed against the Communist party itself. Stalin was far more successful in killing Communists than the Czarist police had even been. For example, of the members of the Central Committee elected at the Party Congress of 1934, more than two thirds were killed during the subsequent purges. From this, it is clear that Stalin’s primary motive was to preclude the establishment of any independent power within the country.

Stalin’s ruthless use of the secret police, and his program of arbitrary arrests and executions, and long terms in prison or labor camps for anyone even slightly critical of his rule, succeeded in cowing the population into submission. By the end of the 1930s he had created perhaps the most totalitarian dictatorship of modern times, a government structure which intruded into every aspect of life and under which intruded into every aspect of life and under which there were no civil liberties.

Among the economic policies instituted by Stalin was the forced collectivization of agriculture. This policy was highly unpopular with the peasants, and many of them resisted it. In the early 1930s, however, by Stalin’s orders, millions of peasants were either killed or starved to death, and in the end his policy prevailed.

Another policy that Stalin pushed was the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union. This was accomplished in part by a series of “Five-Year Plans,” since imitated by many countries outside the Soviet Union. Despite various inefficiencies, Stalin’s program of industrialization was, in the short run, a success. In spite of its enormous material losses during World War II, the Soviet Union emerged from that war as the world’s second largest and industrial power. (In the long run, though, the agricultural and industrial policies which he instituted have severely damaged the Soviet economy.)

In August 1939, Hitler and Stalin signed their famous “nonaggression” pact. Within two weeks, Hitler invaded Poland from the west, and a few weeks later the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east and took over the eastern half of the country. Later that year, the Soviet Union threatened the three independent nations of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia with armed invasion. All three surrendered without a fight and were eventually annexed to the USSR. Similarly, part of Romania was annexed by the threat of force. Finland refused to submit to threats; however, a Russian invasion resulted in the conquest of Finnish territory. An excuse often given for these annexations is that the territory was needed by the Soviet Union for defense against the expected attack from Nazi Germany. However, when the war was over, and Germany thoroughly defeated, Stalin did not relinquish control over any of the occupied territories.

At the end of World War II, Soviet armies occupied much of Eastern Europe, and Stalin utilized the opportunity to set up Communist governments, subservient to the Soviet Union, throughout that region. A Marxist government also emerged in Yugoslavia; however, as there were no Russian troops in that country, Yugoslavia did not become a Russian satellite. To prevent the other Communist countries in Eastern Europe from following the pean satellite states. It was during the immediate postwar era that the Cold War commenced. Although some people have attempted to blame this on Western leaders, it seems abundantly clear that the principal cause of the Cold War was the expansionist policies of Stalin, and his implacable desire to spread the Communist system—and Soviet power—throughout the world.

In January 1953, the Soviet government announced that a group of doctors had been arrested for plotting the deaths of high-ranking Soviet officials. This sounded very much as if Stalin was planning still another set of sweeping purges. However, on March 5, 1953, the seventy-three-year-old dictator died in the Kremlin in Moscow. His body was preserved and put on display in a position of honor, next to the body of Lenin in the mausoleum in Red Square. In later years, however, Stalin’s reputation was downgraded very sharply; and today he is generally abhorred as a tyrant throughout the lands he once ruled.

Stalin’s family life was not very successful. He married in 1904, but three years later his wife died of tuberculosis. Their only child, Jacob, was captured by the Germans in World War II. The Germans offered to exchange him, but Stalin turned the offer down, and Jacob died in a German prison camp. In 1919, Stalin married a second time. His second wife died in 1932, reportedly by her own hand, although there have been rumors that Stalin himself killed her or had her killed. There were two children by the second marriage. The son, an officer in the Soviet Air Force, became an alcoholic. He died in 1962. Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana, defeated from the Soviet Union and in 1967 came to the United States.

The outstanding characteristic of Stalin’s personality was his total ruthlessness. No consideration of sentiment or pity seems to have influenced him in the slightest. He was also an intensely suspicious person, verging on paranoia. He was, however, an immensely capable man: energetic, persistent, and shrewd, with an unusually powerful mind.

As the dictator of the Soviet Union for approximately a quarter of a century, Stalin had a great deal of influence on a great many lives. In fact, if the overall influence of a dictator upon his own generation is deemed to be proportional to the number of people he controls, to the degree of his individual control, and to the time he remains in power, then Stalin was perhaps the foremost dictator in history. During his lifetime, Stalin sent millions of persons to their deaths, or to forced labor camps, or had them starved to death. (There is no way of knowing just how many people died as a result of his various purges, but it was probably in the neighborhood of 30 million.)

There is therefore no doubt that Stalin’s short-term influence was immense. However, like his contemporary, Adolf Hitler (with whom he is often compared), it is unclear how great his permanent influence will be.

During his lifetime, Stalin expanded the borders of the Soviet Union, set up a satellite empire in Eastern Europe, and transformed the USSR into a great power, with influence in every portion of the globe. But in the past few years the imposing Soviet empire in Eastern Europe has crumbled away, and the Soviet Union itself has fractured into fifteen independent states.

During Stalin’s lifetime, the USSR was a vast police state. However, the fearful grip of the secret police was gradually curbed after Stalin’s death. Today, Russians enjoy more individual liberty than at any time in their country’s history.

Stalin’s economic program was derived from the ideas of Marx and Lenin. But while Marx had suggested those policies, and Lenin had started to put them into effect, it was really Stalin who succeeded in largely eliminating private farming and private business enterprises with in Soviet Union. However, those policies have proven to be disastrous, and are now being abandoned entirely.

Despite this, I cannot help but feel that the foregoing greatly underestimates Stalin’s overall influence. Joseph Stalin was not just another power-mad dictator who ruled a large country for twenty-five years. By instituting the Cold War, he dominated the history of the entire world for many years after he died. No war in history—not even World War II—had such a global effect as did the Cold War. It was not just the USSR and the USA which were affected: every country on earth was caught up in the diplomatic and economic aspects of the struggle, and in many parts of the world there were shooting wars as well. The arms race between the two superpowers—which, although the largest and costliest arms race in history, was only one aspect of the struggle—cost many trillions of dollars. Worst of all, perhaps, for many years the entire world lived under the threat of a nuclear holocaust which might entirely destroy civilization.

The Cold War was widely detested, and most people devoutly wished for its end. But for decades the dead, denounced Stalin had more power—more actual effect on the world—than any living political figure. Of him, more perhaps than of any other man in history, it could truly be said that, “the evil that men do lives after them.”

The Cold War is over now, and Stalin’s pernicious influence may finally be ending. We should also remember that some of the blame for Stalin’s crimes must be accorded to Lenin, who preceded Stalin and set the stage for him. Nevertheless, Stalin was one of the titans of history: a cruel genius who will not soon be forgotten.

The Most Influencial People in the World: JULIUS CAESAR (100 B.C. – 44 B.C.)

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Gaius Julius Caesar, the famous Roman military and political leader, was born in Rome in 100 B.C., during a period of extraordinary political turmoil.

In the second century B.C., following their victory over Carthage in the Second Punic War, the Romans had created a large empire. This conquest had made many Romans very rich. However, the wars had badly disrupted the social and economic fabric of Rome, and many of the peasantry had been dispossessed. The Roman Senate, in origin a sort of board of aldermen for a small city, proved unable to fairly and efficiently govern a large empire. Political corruption was rampant, and the entire Mediterranean world was suffering from misgovernment by Rome. In Rome itself, starting in about 133 B.C., there had been a protracted period of disorder. Politicians, generals, and demagogues struggled for power, and partisan armies (such as that of Marius in 87 B.C. and that of Sulla in 82 B.C.) marched through Rome itself. Though the fact of misgovernment was obvious to all, most Roman citizens wanted to retain republican government. Julius Caesar was probably the first important political leader to clearly see that democratic government in Rome was no longer worth saving, and indeed was already past saving.

Caesar himself was descended from an old patrician family. He had received a good education, and as a young man, entered political life. The details of the various offices which he held, his sundry alliances, and his political rise are very appointed the governor of three foreign provinces ruled by Rome: Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy); Illyricum (the coastal regions of present-day Yugoslavia); and Narbonese Gaul (the southern coast of France). Under his command at that time were four Roman legions, totaling about twenty thousand men.

During the years 58-51 B.C., Caesar used those forces to invade and conquer all the rest of Gaul—a region comprising, roughly, present-day France and Belgium, together with parts of Switzerland, Germany, and Holland. Although his forces were badly outnumbered, he succeeded in completely defeating the Gallic tribes and in adding all the territory up to the Rhine River to the Roman dominions. He also sent two expeditions to Britain, but achieved no permanent conquests there.

The conquest of Gaul made Caesar, who was already a leading political figure, a popular and powerful. When his military command ran out, he was ordered by the Roman senate to return to Rome as a private citizen—that is, without his army. Caesar feared, probably correctly, that if he returned to Rome without his troops, his political opponents would use the opportunity to destroy him. Therefore, on the night of January 10-11, 49 B.C., in defiance of the Roman Senate, Caesar led his troops across the Rubicon River in northern Italy and marched on Rome. This plainly illegal act started a civil war between Caesar’s legions on the one hand and forces loyal to the Senate on the other hand. The was lasted four years and ended in a complete victory for Caesar, the final battle being fought at Munda, in Spain, on March 7, 45 B.C.

Caesar had already concluded that the efficient, enlightened despotism which Rome required could best be supplied by himself. He returned to Rome in October of 45 B.C., and was soon made dictator for life. In February of 44 B.C., he was offered a crown but turned it down. However, since he was already a military dictator, this did not greatly reassure his republican opponents. On March 15, 44 B.C., (the famous ides of March) Caesar was assassinated at a Senate meeting by a group of conspirators.

During the last years of his life, Caesar had embarked on a vigorous program of reform. He had instituted a plan to resettle army veterans and the urban poor of Rome in new communities throughout the empire. He had extended Roman citizenship to several additional groups of persons. He planned to institute a uniform system of municipal government for Italian cities. He also planned a vast building program, and a codification of Roman law. He instituted various other reforms as well. But he did not succeed in setting up a satisfactory constitutional system, of government for Rome, and this was perhaps the principal cause of his downfall.

Since it was only a year between Caesar’s victory at Munda and his assassination in Rome, many of his plans were never implemented, and it is hard to be sure just how enlightened or efficient his administration would have been had he lived. Of all his reforms, the one which had the most lasting effect was the adoption of a new calendar. The calendar he introduced has, with only minor modifications, remained in use ever since.

Julius Caesar was one of the most charismatic political figures in history, and possessed a wide variety of talents. He was a successful political, a brilliant general, and an excellent orator and writer. The book he wrote (De Bello Gallico) describing the conquest of Gaul has long been considered a literary classic: in the opinion of many students, the most readable and interesting of all the Latin classics. Caesar was bold, vigorous, and handsome. He was a notorious Don Juan, and even by the permissive standards of his day was considered promiscuous. (His most famous affair, of course, was his celebrated romance with Cleopatra.)

Caesar’s character has often been criticized. He was ambitious for power, and he certainly used his political offices to become rich. However, unlike most ambitious politicians, he was in general neither devious nor deceitful. Caesar was ruthless and brutal when fighting the Gauls. On the other hand, he was remarkably magnanimous to his defeated Roman opponents.

It is an indication of the prestige attached to his name that both the German imperial title, Kaiser, and the Russian imperial title, Czar, are derived from the word “Caesar.” He has always been far more famous than his grandnephew Augustus Caesar’s actual influence upon history is not equal to his enormous fame. It is true that he played a significant role in the downfall of the Roman Republic. But his importance in that respect should not be exaggerated, since republican government in Rome was already tottering.

Caesar’s most important accomplishment was his conquest of Gaul. The territories he conquered there were to remain under Roman rule for approximately five centuries. During that interval, they became thoroughly Romanized. Roman laws, customs, and language were adopted, and later, Roman Christianity as well. Present-day French is derived to a substantial extent from the colloquial Latin of those times.

Caesar’s conquest of Gaul was also an important influence on Rome itself, providing Italy for several centuries with security against attacks from the north. Indeed, the conquest of Gaul was a factor in the security of the whole Roman Empire.

Would the Romans sooner or later have conquered Gaul, even without Caesar? They had no technological or numerical advantage over the Gallic tribes. On the other hand, Rome was rapidly expanding in the period before Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, and for some time afterward. Given the high military effectiveness of the Roman armies of that time, the proximity of Gaul to Rome, and the disunity of the Hallic tribes, it appears that Gaul had little chance of remaining independent. In any event, it is indisputable that Caesar was the general who actually defeated the large Celtic armies and conquered Gaul, and he is in this book chiefly for the accomplishment.

The Most Influencial People in the World: WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR (c. 1027 – 1087)

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In the year 1066, Duke William of Normandy, with only a few thousand troops behind him, crossed the English Channel in an attempt to become ruler of England. His bold attempt succeeded—the last time that any foreign invasion of England has been successful. The Norman Conquest did far more than obtain the throne of England for William and his successors. It profoundly influenced all subsequent English history—in ways and to an extent that William himself could scarcely have envisioned.

William was born about 1027, in Falaise, a town in Normandy, France. He was the illegitimate, but only son of Robert I, Duke of Normandy. Robert died in 1035, while returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Before his departure, he had designated William to be his heir. Thus, at the age of eight, William became Duke of Normandy.

Far from assuring him of a comfortable position of wealth and power, the succession put William in a precarious position. He was only a little boy, and he was the overlord of feudal barons who were grown men. Not surprisingly, the barons’ ambition was stronger than their loyalty, and a period of severe anarchy followed, during which three of William’s guardians died violent deaths, and his personal teacher was murdered. Even with the help of King Henry I of France, his nominal overlord, William was lucky to survive those early years.

In 1042, when William was in his mid-teens, he was knighted. Thereafter, he took a personal role in political events. After a long series of wars against the feudal barons of Normandy, William finally succeeded in gaining firm control of his duchy. (Incidentally, his illegitimate birth was a distinct political handicap, and his opponents frequently referred to him as “the Bastard.”) In 1063, he succeeded in conquering the neighboring province of Maine, and in 1064, he was also recognized as the overlord of the neighboring province of Brittany.

From 1042 to 1066, the King of England was Edward the Confessor. Since Edward was childless, there was much maneuvering for the succession to the English throne. From the standpoint of consanguinity, William’s claim to succeed Edward was rather weak: Edward’s mother was a sister of William’s grandfather. However, in 1051, Edward, perhaps influenced by William’s manifest ability, promised William the succession.

In 1064, Harold Godwin, the most powerful of the English lords, and a close associate and brother-in-law of Edward the Confessor, fell into William’s hands. William treated Harold well, but detained him until Harold swore a solemn oath to support William’s claim to the English throne. Many people would not consider a promise extorted in this fashion to be either legally or morally binding, and certainly Harold did not. When Edward died in 1066, Harold Godwin claimed the throne of England for himself, and the Witan (a council of English lords which often took part in deciding the succession) chose him to be the new king. William, ambitious to extend his realm and angered at Harold’s breach of his oath, decided to invade England in order to impose his claim by force of arms.

William assembled a fleet and an army on the French coast, and in early August of 1066, he was ready to set sail. However, the expedition was delayed for several weeks by unrelenting north winds. Meanwhile, Herald Hardraade, the King of Norway, launched a separate invasion of England from across the south of England, prepared to oppose William’s invasion. Now he had to march his army to the north, to meet the Norwegian attach. On September 25, at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, the Norwegian king was killed and his forces routed.

Just two days later, the wind changed in the England Channel, and William promptly transported his troops to England. Perhaps Harold should have let William march toward him, or at least he should have fully rested his troops before offering battle. Instead, he quickly marched his troops back south to fight William. The two armies met on October 14, 1066, at the celebrated Battle of Hastings. By the end of the day, William’s cavalry and archers had succeeded in routing the Anglo-Saxon forces. Near nightfall, King Harold himself was killed. His two brothers had been killed earlier in the battle, and there was no English leader remaining with the stature to raise a new army or to contest William’s claim to the throne. William was crowned in London that Christmas day.

Over the next five years, there were a series of scattered revolts, but William suppressed them all. William used these revolts as a pretext to confiscate all of the land in England and to declare it his own personal property. Much of it was then dispensed to his important Norman followers, who held the land under feudal tenure as his vassals. As a result, virtually the entire Anglo-Saxon aristocracy was dispossessed and replaced by Normans. (As dramatic as this sounds, only a few thousand people were directly involved in this transfer of power. For the peasants tilling the soil, there was simply a change of overlords.)

William always contended that he was the rightful King of England, and during his lifetime most English institutions were retained. As William was interested in obtaining information concerning his new holdings, he ordered that a detailed census of the population and property of England be taken. The results were recorded in the enormous Doomsday Book, which has been an invaluable source of historical information. (The original manuscripts still exist; they are now in the Public Record Office in London.)

William was married and had four sons and five daughters. He died in 1087, in the city of Rouen, in northern France. Every monarch of England since then has been his direct descendant. Curiously, although William the Conqueror is perhaps the most important of all the kings of England, he himself was not English, but French. He was born and died in France, lived almost his entire life there, and spoke only French. (He was, incidentally, illiterate.)

In assessing William’s influence upon history, the most important thing to remember is that the Norman conquest of England would not have occurred without him. William was not the natural successor to the English throne, and save for his personal ambition and ability, there was no historical reason or necessity for the Norman invasion. England had not been invaded from France since the Roman conquest a thousand years earlier. It has not been successfully invaded from France (or from anywhere else) in the nine centuries since William’s day.

The question then is: just how great was the effect of the Norman Conquest? The Norman invaders were relatively small in number, but they had a great influence upon English history. In the five or six centuries before the Norman Conquest, England had been invaded repeatedly by Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian peoples, and her culture was basically Teutonic. The Normans were themselves of Viking descent, but their language and culture were French. The Norman Conquest, therefore, had the effect of bringing English culture into close contact with French culture. (Today that may seem a natural thing; however, in the centuries before William the Conqueror, most of England’s culture contacts had been with northern Europe.) What resulted in England was a blend of the French and Anglo-Saxon predecessors, thereby had at their command a force of several thousand armed knights—a powerful army by medieval standards. The Normans were skilled administrators, and the English government became one of the most powerful and effective governments in Europe.

Another interesting result of the Norman Conquest was the development of a new English language. As a result of the Norman Conquest, there was a large infusion of the Norman Conquest, there was a large infusion of new words into English—so large, in fact, that modern English dictionaries include more words of French or Latin origin than of Anglo-Saxon derivation. Furthermore, during the three or four centuries immediately following the Norman Conquest, English grammar changed very rapidly, largely in the direction of greater simplicity. Had it not been for the Norman Conquest, present-day English might be only slightly different from Low German and Dutch. This is the only known instance in which a major language would not exist in anything like its present form, were it not for the career of a single individual. (It is worth nothing that English is today quite plainly the foremost language in the world.)

One might also mention the effect of the Norman Conquest upon France. For roughly four centuries thereafter, there was a long series of wars between the English kings (who, because of their Norman origin, held substantial land in France) and the French kings. These wars are directly traceable to the Norman Conquest; prior to 1066, there had been no wars between England and France.

In many ways, England is substantially different from all the continental European countries. Both by her acquisition of a great empire and by her democratic institutions, England have had a profound to her own size. To what extent are these aspects of British political history a consequence of William’s activities?

Historians are not agreed on just why modern democracy developed originally in England, rather than, say, in Germany. But English culture and institutions were a blend of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman, and this blend resulted from the Norman Conquest. On the other hand, I hardly think it reasonable to give the despotic William too much of the credit for the later growth of English democracy. Certainly, there was precious little democracy in England in the century following the Norman Conquest.

With regard to the formation of the British empire, William’s influence seems more clear. Prior to 1066, England had invariably been on the receiving end of invasions. After 1066, the roles were reversed. Thanks to the strong central government which William established and which his successors maintained, and to the military resources which this government commanded, England was never invaded again. Instead, she was continually engaged in overseas military operations. It was therefore natural that when the power of Europe expanded overseas, England eventually acquired more colonies than any other European state.

One cannot, of course, give William the Conqueror the credit for all later developments in English history; but surely the Norman Conquest was an indirect factor in much of what later occurred. The long-term influence of William is therefore very great.

The Most Influencial People in the World: SIGMUND FREUD (1856-1939)

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Sigmund Freud, the originator of psychoanalysis, was born in 1856, in the town of Freiberg, which is now in Czechoslovakia but was then part of the Austrian empire. When he was four years old, his family moved to Vienna, where he lived almost his entire life. Freud was an outstanding student in school, and he received his medical degree from the University of Vienna in 1881. During the next ten years, he did research in physiology, joined the staff of a psychiatric clinic, engaged in private practice in neurology, worked in Paris with the eminent French neurologist, Jean Charcot, and also worked with the Viennese physician, Josef Breuer.

Freud’s ideas on psychology developed gradually. It was not until 1895 that his first book, Studies in Hysteria, appeared, with Breuer as co-author. His next book, The Interpretation of Dreams, appeared in 1900, and was one of his most original and most significant works. Although the book sold very slowly at first, it greatly enhanced his reputation. Other important works followed, and by 1908, when he gave a series of lectures in the United States, Freud was already famous. In 1902, he had organized a psychology discussion group in Vienna. One of the earliest members was Alfred Adler, and a few years later, Carl Jung joined. Both men were to become world-famous psychologists in their own right.

Freud was married and had six children. In his later life, he developed cancer of the jaw, and from 1923 on, he underwent more than thirty operations in an attempt to correct the condition. Nevertheless, he continued working, and some important works were produced during these later years. In 1938, the Nazis entered Austria, and the 82-year-old Freud, who was Jewish, was forced to flee to London, where he died the following year.

Freud’s contributions to psychological theory were so extensive that it is difficult to summarize them briefly. He stressed the enormous importance of unconscious mental processes in human behavior. He showed how such processes affect the content of dreams, and cause commonplace mishaps such as slips of the tongue and forgetting names, as well as self-inflicted accidents and even diseases.

Freud developed the technique of psychoanalysis as a method of treating mental illness. He formulated a theory of the structure of the human personality. He also developed or popularized psychological theories concerning anxiety, defense mechanisms, the castration complex, repression, and sublimation, to name just a few. His writings greatly stimulated interest in psychological theory. Many of his ideas were, and are, highly controversial, and have provoked heated discussion ever since he proposed them.

Freud is perhaps best known for proposing the idea that repressed sexual feelings often play a causative role in mental illness or neurosis. (Actually, Freud did not originate this idea, although his writings did much to give it scientific currency.) He also pointed out that sexual feelings and desires begin in early childhood, rather than in adolescence.

Because many of Freud’s ideas are still so controversial, it is very difficult to assess his place in history. He was a pioneer and a trailblazer, with a remarkable talent for coming up with new ideas. However, Freud’s theories (unlike those of Darwin or Pasteur) have never won the general endorsement of the scientific community, and it is hard to tell what fraction of his ideas will ultimately be considered correct.

Despite the continuing controversy over his ideas, there seems little doubt that Freud is a towering figure in the history of human thought. His ideas on psychology have completely revolutionized our conception of the human mind, and many of the ideas and terms which he introduced have become common usage—e.g., the id, the ego, the superego, the Oedipus complex, and the death wish.

It is true that psychoanalysis is an extremely expensive mode of treatment, and that it quite often fails. But it is also true that the technique has a great many successes to its credit. Future psychologists may well conclude that repressed sexual feelings play a lesser role in human behavior than many Freudians have claimed. However, such feeling surely play a greater role than most psychologists before Freud had believed. Similarly, the majority of psychologists are now convinced that unconscious mental processes play a decisive role in human behavior—one that was greatly underestimated before Freud.

Freud was certainly not the first psychologist, and in the long run probably will not be considered the one whose ideas were most nearly correct. Still, he was clearly the most influential and important figure in the development of modern psychological theory, and in view of the enormous importance of his field, he certainly deserves a place on this list.

The Most Influencial People in the World: EDWARD JENNER (1749-1823)

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The English physician Edward Jenner was the man who developed and popularized the technique of vaccination as a preventive measure against the dreaded disease of smallpox.

Today, when, thanks to Jenner, smallpox has been wiped off the face of the earth, we tend to forget just how frightful were the casualties it caused in earlier centuries. Smallpox was so contagious that a substantial majority of the people living in Europe caught the disease at some time during their lives. And it was so virulent that at least 10 to 20 percent of those who contracted the disease died from it. Of those who survived, another 10 or 15 percent were permanently disfigured by severe pockmarks. Smallpox was not confined to Europe, of course, but raged throughout North America, India, China, and many other parts of the world. Everywhere, children were the most frequent victims.

For many years, attempts had been made to find a reliable means of preventing smallpox. It had been known for a very long time that a person who survived an attack of smallpox was thereafter immune, and would not catch the disease a second time. In the Orient, this observation had led to the practice of inoculating healthy people with material taken from someone who had a mild case of smallpox. This was done in the hope that the person so inoculated would himself contract only a mild case of the disease and, after recovering, would be immune.

This practice was introduced into England in the early eighteenth century by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and it had become fairly common there a good many years before Jenner. Jenner himself, in fact, had been inoculated with smallpox when he was eight years old. However, this ingenious preventive measure had a grave drawback: a fair number of persons so inoculated developed not a minor attack of the disease but a virulent attack which left them badly pockmarked. In fact, roughly 2 percent of the time inoculation itself resulted in a fatal attack of smallpox! Clearly, a superior method of prevention was badly needed.

Jenner was born in 1749, in the small town of Berkeley, in Gloucestershire, England. As a boy of twelve, he was apprenticed to a surgeon. Later, he studied anatomy and worked in a hospital. In 1792, he received a medical degree from St. Andrew’s University. In his mid-forties, he was well established as a physician and surgeon in Gloucestershire.

Jenner was familiar with the belief, which was common among dairymaids and farmers in his region, that people who contracted cowpox—a minor disease of cattle, which can, however, be transmitted to humans—never got smallpox afterward. (Cowpox itself is not dangerous to human beings, although its symptoms somewhat resemble those of an extremely mild attack of smallpox.) Jenner realized that if the farmers’ belief was correct, then inoculating people with cowpox would provide a safe method of immunizing them against smallpox. He investigated the matter carefully, and by 1796, became convinced that the belief was indeed correct. He therefore decided to test it directly.

In May 1796, Jenner inoculated James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy, with matter taken from a cowpox pustule on a dairymaid’s hand. As expected, the boy developed cowpox, but soon recovered. Several weeks later, Jenner inoculated Phipps with smallpox. As he had hoped, the child developed no signs of the disease.

After some further investigations, Jenner set forth his results in a short book, An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, which he published privately in 1798. It was that book which was primarily responsible for the rapid adoption of the practice of vaccination, and for years devoted much of his time to disseminating knowledge of his technique, and working for its adoption.

The practice of vaccination spread rapidly in England, and was soon made compulsory in the British army and navy. Eventually it was adopted throughout most of the world.

Jenner freely offered his technique to the world and made no attempt to profit from it. However, in 1802, the British Parliament, in gratitude, granted him an award of 10,000 Pounds. A few years later, Parliament granted him an additional 20,000 Pounds. He became world-famous, and many honors and medals were bestowed upon him. Jenner was married and had three children. He lived to be seventy-three, dying in early 1823, in his home town of Berkeley.

As we have seen, Jenner did not originate the idea that an attack of cowpox would confer immunity against smallpox; he heard it from others. It even appears, in fact, that a few persons had deliberately been vaccinated with cowpox before Jenner came along.

But although Jenner was not a strikingly original scientist, there are few men who have done as much to benefit mankind. By his investigations, his experiments, and his writings, he transformed a folk belief, which he medical profession had never taken seriously, into a standard practice which has saved countless millions of lives. Although Jenner’s technique could only be applied to the prevention of a single disease, that disease was a major one. He richly deserves the honors which his own and all subsequent generations have accorded him.

The Most Influencial People in the World: WILHELM CONRAD RONTGEN (1845-1923)

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Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen, the discoverer of X-rays, was born in 1845, in the town of Lennep, in Germany. He received his Ph.D. in 1869 from the University of Zurich. During the next nineteen years, Rontgen worked at a number of different universities, gradually acquiring a reputation as an excellent scientist. In 1888, he was appointed professor of physics and director of the Physical institute at the University of Wurzburg. It was there, in 1895, that Rontgen made the discovery which made him famous.

On November 8, 1895, Rontgen was doing some experiment with cathode rays. Cathode rays consist of a stream of elections. The stream is produced by applying a high voltage between electrodes placed at each end of a closed glass tube from which almost all of the air has been removed. Cathode rays themselves are not particularly penetrating, and are readily stopped by a few centimeters of air. On this occasion, Rontgen had completely covered his cathode-ray tube with heavy black paper, so that even when the electric current was turned on, no light could be seen coming from the tube. However, when Rontgen turned on the current in the cathode-ray tube, he was surprised to see that a fluorescent screen lying on a bench nearby started glowing, just as though a light had stimulated it. He turned off the tube, and the screen (which was coated with barium platinocyanide, a fluorescent substance) stopped glowing. Since the cathode-ray tube was completely covered, Rontgen soon realized that some invisible form of radiation must be coming from the tube when the electric current was on. Because of its mysterious nature, he called this invisible radiation “X-rays”—“X” being the usual mathematical symbol for an unknown.

Excited by his chance discovery, Rontgen dropped his other research and concentrated on investigating the properties of the X-rays. In a few weeks of intense work, he discovered the following facts: (1) X-rays can cause various other chemicals besides barium platinocyanide to fluoresce. (2) X-rays can pass through many materials which are opaque to ordinary light. In particular, Rontgen noticed that X-rays could pass right through his flesh the cathode-rays tube and shadow of the bones in his hand. (3) X-rays travel in straight lines; unlike electrically charged particles, X-rays are not deflected by magnetic fields.

In December 1895, Rontgen wrote his first paper on X-rays. His report promptly aroused great interest and excitement. Within a few months, hundreds of scientists were investigating X-rays, and within a year roughly a thousand papers had been published on the topic! One of the scientists whose research was directly motivated by Rontgen’s discovery was Antoine Henri Becquerel. Becquerel, although intending to investigate X-rays, instead chanced upon the even more important phenomenon of radioactivity.

In general, X-rays are generated whenever high-energy electrons strike an object. The X-rays themselves do not consist of electrons, but rather of electromagnetic waves. They are therefore basically similar to visible radiation (that is, light waves), except that the wavelengths of X-rays are very much shorter.

The best known application of X-rays, of course, is their use in medical and dental diagnosis. Another application is radiotherapy, in which X-rays are used to destroy malignant tumors or to arrest their growth. X-rays also have many industrial applications. For example, they can be used to measure the thickness of certain materials or to detect hidden flaws. X-rays are also useful in many fields of scientific research, from biology with a great deal of information concerning atomic and molecular structure.

Rontgen deserves full credit for the discovery of X-rays. He worked alone, his discovery was unanticipated, and he followed it up superbly. Furthermore, his discovery provided an important stimulus to Becquerel and to other researchers.

Nevertheless, one should not overestimate Rontgen’s importance. The applications of X-rays are certainly very useful; however, one cannot say that they have transformed our whole technology, as Faraday’s discover of electromagnetic induction did. Nor can one say that the discovery of X-rays was of truly fundamental importance in scientific theory. Ultraviolet rays (whole wavelengths are shorter than those of visible light) had been known for almost a century. The existence of X-rays—which are similar to ultraviolet waves, except that their wavelengths are shorter still—therefore fits quite smoothly into the framework of classical physics. All in all, I think it quite reasonable to rank Rontgen significantly below Rutherford, whose discoveries were of more fundamental importance.

Rontgen had no children of his own; however, he and his wife adopted a daughter. In 1901, Rontgen was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics, the first one ever awarded. He died in 1923, in Munich, Germany.

The Most Influencial People in the World: JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750)

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The great composer Johann Sebastian Bach was the first man to successfully combine the differing national styles of music which had existed in western Europe. By bringing together what was best in the Italian, French, and German musical traditions, he succeeded in enriching all of them. Not outstandingly famous during his own lifetime, Bach was half forgotten during the fifty years following his death. But his reputation has grown steadily during the last 150 years, and he is today generally acknowledged to be one of the two or three greatest composers of all time: in the opinion of some, the greatest of them all.

Back was born in 1685, in the town of Eisenach, in Germany. It was his good fortune to be born into an environment where musical talent was admired and musical achievement encouraged. Indeed, the Bach family had been outstanding in the field of music for many years before Johann Sebastian was born. His father was a fine violenist, two of his great-uncles had been talented composers, and several of his cousins were highly respected musicians.

Bach’s mother died when he was nine, and he was an orphan by the time he was ten. As a teenager, he received a scholarship to St. Michael’s School in Luneburg, partly because of his fine voice and partly on the basis of need. He graduated from St. Micharl’s in 1702, and the following year found a position as a violinist in a chamber orchestra. Over the next twenty years, he held a variety as a superb organ player, although he was a composer, teacher, and conductor as well. In 1723, when Bach was thirty-eight years old, he obtained the position of cantor of St. Thomas’s Church in Leipzig. He held that position for the remaining twenty-seven years of his life. He died in 1750.

Although Bach was never without a good position and was always able to support his family, he was not nearly as famous during his own lifetime as Mozart and Beethoven (or even Franz Liszt or Fraderic Chopin) became during their lifetimes. Not all of Bach’s employers recognized his genius. In Leipzig, the council had wished to hire a “first rate musician”; it was only when they were unable to obtain the services of their first two choices that they reluctantly offered the position to Bach! (On the other hand, a few years earlier, when he had wished to leave his post as organist and concertmaster at the ducal court at weimar for a new position, the duke was so reluctant to have him leave that he actually put Bach in prison. Bach spent over three weeks in jail before the duke finally relented.)

Bach married his second cousin when he was twenty-two years old. They had seven children together, but Bach’s wife died when he was thirty-five years old. He remarried the following year, and his second wife not only helped raise the first seven children, but bore him an additional thirteen children. Only nine of Bach’s children survived him, but four of those became well-known musicians in their own right. A talented family indeed!

Bach was a prolific composer. His works include approximately300 cantatas; the set of 48 fugues and preludes that compose The Well-Tempered Clavier; at least 140 other preludes; more than 100 other harpsichord compositions; 23 concertos; 4 overtures; 33 sonatas; 5 masses; 3 oratorios; and a large variety of other pieces. All in all, Bach composed more than 800 serious pieces of music during his lifetime!

Bach was a Lutheran, and deeply religious. He wished his music to serve the church, and the majority of his works are religious music. He did not attempt to invent new forms of music, but rather carried the existing forms to their highest peak.

During the half-century following his death, the music of Johann Sebastian Bach was largely ignored. (It is worth nothing, though, that the greatest musicians of that era—Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven—did appreciate Bach’s genius.) New musical style were evolving, and the öld-fashioned”music of Bach went temporarily into eclipse. After 1800, however, there was a revival of interest in Bach’s music, and since then his reputation and popularity have steadily climbed. Bach is more popular today, in the secular age, than he was during his own lifetime. It is indeed strange that a composer who was considered old-fashioned 200 years ago, both in style and in subject matter, should be widely admired today. What is the reason for his immense reputation?

In the first place, Bach is generally considered to be technically the best craftman of all the major composers. He was acqainted with all the musical resources of his day, and could use each of them flawlessly. For example, no subsequest composer has ever rivaled Bach’s artistic command of counter-point (a technique in which two or more separate melodies are played at the same time). In addition, his works are admired for the logic and diversity of their orchestration, the cogency of their themes, and the expressiveness of their melodies.

To most serious students of music, the depth and complexity of structure of Bach’s compositions give them a more lasting appeal than the more easily understood works of most other composers. Many people whose interest in music is more casual think of Bach as a rather difficult composer; however, it should be pointed out that his following is not confined to a small musical elite. His records probably sell better than those of any classical composer except Beethoven. ( In the long run, of course, the works of a “popular” composer who is all the rage for a while, but whose popularity proves transient.)

Where should Bach be ranked on this list? Plainly, he should be ranked below Beethoven: not only are Beethoven’s works more popular, but he was also a daring innovator who did more to influence the course of musical history than Bach did. It likewise seems appropriate to rank Bach below Michelangelo, the leading figure in the visual arts, and far below Shakespeare, the greatest literary genius. But in view of the enduring popularity of Bach’s music and the large influence it has had upon subsequent composers, it seems reasonable to rank him higher than any other artistic or literary figure.

The Most Influencial People in the World: LAO TZU (fl. 4th C.B.C.)

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Of the many thousands of books which have been written in China, the one which has perhaps been the most frequently translated and read outside that country is a slender volume written over two thousand years ago and known as the Lao Tzu, or the Tao Te Ching. The Tao Te Ching (Classic of the Way and its Power) is the central text in which the philosophy of Taoism is expounded.

It is a subtle book, written in an extraordinary cryptic style and capable of many interpretations. The central idea concerns the Tao, which is usually translated “the Way”or “the Road.”But the concept is comewhat obsecure, since the Tao Te Ching itself begins by saying: “The Tao which can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name which can be named is not the eternal name.”Nevertheless, we might say that Tao means roughly “Nature”or “the Natural Order.”

Taoism takes the view that the individual should not struggle against the Tao, but should submit to it and work with it. Actively seeking to gain or exercise power is not so much immoral as it is foolish and furtile. The Tao cannot be defeated; one should instead try to live in conformity with it. (A Taoist might point out that water, which is infinitely soft, which flows without protest into the lowest places, and which responds to even the weakest force without resistance, is nevertheless indestructible, whereas the hardest rocks are worn away in time.)

For an individual human beinf, simplicity and naturalness are usually advisable. Violence should be avoided, as should all striving for monsy or prestige. One should not seek to reform the world, but rather to respect it. For governments, also, a somewhat inactive policy is usually the wisest course. There are too many statutes already. Passing more laws, or harshly enforcing the old ones, usually makes matters worse. High taxes, ambitious government programs, and making war are all contrary to the spirit of the Taoist philosophy.

According to Chinese tradition, the author of the Tao Te Ching was a man called Lao Tzu, who is said to have been an older contemporary of confucius. But confucius lived in the sixth century B.C., and both because of its style and its content, few modern scholars believe that the Tao Te Ching was written at such an early date. There is considerable dispute as to the book’s actual date of conposition. (The Tao Te Ching itself never mentions a specific person, place, date, or historical event.) However, 320 B.C. is a good estimate—certainly within eightly years of the true date, and probably much closer.

This problem has led to a great deal of dispute concerning the dates—and even the existence—of Lao Tzu himself. Some authorities believe the tradition that Lao Tzu lived in the sixth century B.C., and have therefore concluded that he did not write the Tao Te Ching. Other scholars have suggested that he is merely a legendary figure. My viewpoint, accepted only by a minority of scholars, is that: (1) Lao Tzu was a real person, and the author of the Tao Te Ching; (2) He lived in the fourth century B.C.; and (3) The story that Lao Tzu was an older contemporary of Confucius is fictitous, and was fabricated by later Taoist philodophersin order to lend prestige to the man and his book.

It is worth nothing that of the early Chinese writers neither Confucius (551-479 B.C.), nor Mo Ti (fifth century B.C.), nor Mencius (371-289 B.C.) makes any mention of either Lao Tzu or the Tao Te Ching; however, Chuang Tzu, an important Taoist philosopher who flourished about 300 B.C., mentions Lao Tzu repeatedly.

Since even the existence of Lao Tzu is in dispute, we should be skeptical of biographical details. But there are respectable sources for the following statements: Lao Tzu was born and lived in northern China. For part of his life he was an historian or curator of official archives, most probably at Loyang, the capital of the Chou dynasty monarchs. Lao Tzu was not his original name, bit is rather an honorific title meaning roughly öld master.”He was married and had a son named Tsung. Tsung later became a general in the state of Wei.

Although Taoism started as a basically secular philosophy, a religious movement eventually developed out of it.however, while Taoism as a philosophy continued to be based primarily on the ideas expressed in the Tao Te Ching, the Taoist religion soon became encrusted with an enormous number of superstitious beliefs and practices that have relatively little to do with the teachings of Lao Tzu.

Assuming that Lao Tzu actually was the author of the Tao Te Ching, his influence has been large indeed. The book is very short (less than six thousand characters in Chinese, and therefore small enough to fit on a single sheet of newspaper!), but it contains much food for thought. A whole series of Taoist philosophers have used the book as a starting point for their own ideas.

In the West, the Tao Te Ching has been far more popular than the writings of Confucius or of any Confucian philosopher. In fact, at least forty different English translations of the book have been published, a larger number than for any other book except the bible.

InChina itself, Confucianism has generally been the dominant philosophy, and where there is a clear conflict between the ideas of Lao Tzu and those of Confucius, most Chinese have followed the latter. Nevertheless, Lao Tzu has generally been highly respected by the Confucians. Furthermore, in many cases, Taoist ideas have simply been assimilated into Confucian philosophy, and have thereby influenced millions of persons who do not call themselves Taoists. Similarly, Taoism has had a marked influence on the Chinese development of Buddhist philosophy, and in particular on Zen Buddhism. Though few people today call themselves Taoists, there is no Chinese philosopher except Confucius who has had so widespread and enduring an impact on human thought as Lao Tzu.

The Most Influencial People in the World: VOLTAIRE (1694-1778)

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Francois Marie Arouet—better known by his pseudonym, Voltaire—was the leading figure of the French Enlightenment. A poet, playwright, essayist, novelist, short-story writer, historian, and philosopher, Voltaire was the apostle of freethinking liberalism.

Voltaire was born in 1694, in Paris. He was of middle class origin, and his father was a lawyer. In his youth, Voltaire attended the Jesuit college of Louis-le-Grand in Paris. Afterward, he studied law for a while, but soon dropped it. As a young man in Paris, he soon acquired the reputation of being a very witty fellow, full of clever jokes and satiric verses, Voltaire was arrested and thrown into the Bastille. He spent almost a year in prison, where he occupied his time by writing an epic poem, the Henriade, which later won considerable acclaim. In 1718, shortly after Voltaire was released from prison, his play Oedipe was produced in Paris, where it was an enormous success. At twenty-four, Voltaire was famous, and for his remaining sixty years, he was a leading French literary figure.

Voltaire was clever with money as well as with words, and he gradually became an independently wealthy man. In 1726, however, he ran into some trouble. Voltaire had already established himself as the wittiest and most brilliant conversationalist of his time (and perhaps of all time). He lacked, however, the modesty which some French aristocrats felt was appropriate for a commoner. This led to a public dispute between Voltaire and one such aristocrat, the Chevalier de Rohan, in which Voltaire’s wit got him the better of the verbal fighting. Soon afterwards, however, the Chevalier had Voltaire beaten up by a group of ruffians and, later on, thrown into the Bastille. Voltaire was soon released from jail on the condition that he leaves France. He therefore went to England, where he stayed for about two and a half years.

Voltaire’s stay in England proved to be a major turning point in his life. He learned to speak and read English, and became familiar with the works of such famous Englishmen as John Locke, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and William Shakespeare. He also became personally acquainted with the most of the leading English thinkers of the day. Voltaire was impressed by Shakespeare and by English science and empiricism; but what most impressed him about the English was their political system. English democracy and personal liberties presented a striking contrast to the political conditions which Voltaire knew in France. No English lord could issue a letter de cachet and thereby have Voltaire summarily thrown into jail; and if for any reason Voltaire were to be detained improperly, a writ of habeas corpus would soon get him released.

When Voltaire returned to France, he wrote his first major philosophical work, the Letters philosophiques, usually called the Letters on the English. That book, which was published in 1734, marks the true beginning of the French Enlightenment. In the Letters on the English, Voltaire presented a generally favorable description of the British political system and of the ideas of John Locke and other English thinkers. Publication of the book aroused the anger of the French authorities, and Voltaire was again forced to leave Paris.

Voltaire spent most of the next fifteen years in Cirey, in eastern France, where he was the lover of Madame du Chatelet, the brilliant and educated wife of Marquis. In 1750, a year after her death, Voltaire went to Germany at the personal invitation of Frederick the Great of Prussia. Voltaire spent three years at Frederick’s court in Potsdam. At first he got along well with the brilliant and intellectual Frederick, but eventually they quarreled, and in 1753, Voltaire left Germany.

After leaving Germany, Voltaire settled on an estate near Geneva, where he could be safe from both the French and Prussian kings. However, his liberal views made even Switzerland a bit dangerous for him. In 1758, therefore, he moved to a new estate in Ferney, near the French-Swiss border, where he would have two possible directions in which to flee in case of trouble with the authorities. He stayed there for twenty years, pouring out literary and philosophical works, corresponding with intellectual leaders throughout Europe, and entertaining visitors.

Through all these years, Voltaire’s literary output continued undiminished. He was a fantastically prolific writer, perhaps the most voluminous author on this list. All told, his collected writings run to well over 30,000 pages. They include epic poems, lyric verse, personal letters, pamphlets, novels, short stories, plays, and serious books on history and philosophy.

Voltaire had always been a strong believer in religious toleration. However, when he was in his late sixties, a number of particularly horrifying instances of persecution of Protestants occurred in France. Aroused and outraged, Voltaire dedicated himself to an intellectual crusade against religious fanaticism. He wrote large numbers of political pamphlets opposing religious intolerance. Also, he took to ending all his personal letters with the words Ecrasez l’infame, which means, “Stamp out the infamous thing.” To Voltaire, “the infamous thing” was religious bigotry and fanaticism.

In 1778, when he was eighty-three years old, Voltaire returned to Paris, where he attended the premiere of his new play, Irene. Large crowds applauded him as the “grand old man” of the French Enlightenment. Hundreds of admirers, including Benjamin Franklin, visited him. But Voltaire’s life was soon over. He died in Paris on May 30, 1778. Because of his outspoken anticlericalism, he could not receive a Christian funeral in Paris; but thirteen years later, victorious French revolutionaries had his remains dug up and reburied in the Pantheon in Paris.

Voltaire’s writings are so voluminous that it would be very difficult to list even his major works in a short article. More important than the titles, though, are the basic ideas which he promoted throughout his career. One of his strongest beliefs was in the necessity for freedom of speech and of the press. A remark frequently attributed to him is: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Although Voltaire never actually made that explicit statement, it certainly reflects his attitude.

Another leading principle of Voltaire’s was his belief in freedom of religion. Throughout his career, he steadfastly opposed religious intolerance and persecution. Although Voltaire believed in God, he firmly opposed most religious dogmas, and constantly presented the view that organized religion was basically a sham.

Quite naturally, Voltaire never believed that the titled aristocrats of France were wiser or better than he, and his audience learned that the so-called “divine right of kings” was a lot of nonsense. Although Voltaire himself was far from a modern-style democrat (he tended to prefer a strong but enlightened monarch), the main thrust of his ideas was plainly opposed to any form of hereditary rule. It is therefore not surprising that most of his followers came to favor democracy. His political and religious ideas were thus in the mainstream of the French Enlightenment, and they contributed substantially to the French Revolution of 1789.

Voltaire was not himself a scientist, but he was interested in science and was a firm supported of the empirical outlook of Francis Bacon and John Locke. He was also a serious and capable historian. One of his most important works was his universal history, the Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations. This book differed from most previous histories in two main respects: first, Voltaire recognized that Europe was only a small part of the world, and he therefore devoted a considerable portion of his work to Asian history; second, Voltaire took the view that cultural history is, in general, far more important than political history. His book is therefore concerned more with social and economic conditions and the development of the arts, than with kings and the wars they fought.

Voltaire was not as original a philosopher as several others on this list. To a considerable extent, he took the ideas of other men, such as John Locke and Francis Bacon, restated them, and popularized them. However, it was through Voltaire’s writings, more than anyone else’s that the ideas of democracy, religious toleration, and intellectual freedom were disseminated throughout France, and for that matter, throughout much of Europe. Though there were other important writers (Diderot, d’Alembert, Rousseau, Montesquieu, etc.) in the French Enlightenment, it is fair to say that Voltaire was the preeminent leader of that movement. In the first place, his pungent literary style, long career, and voluminous output assured him a far greater audience than any of the other writers. In the second place, his ideas were characteristic of the entire Enlightenment. And in the third place, Voltaire preceded all the other important figures in point of time. Montesquieu great work, The Spirit of the Laws, did not appear until 1748; the first volume of the famed Encyclopedia came out in 1751; and Rousseau’s first essay was written in 1750. By contrast, Voltaire’s Letters on the English was published in 1734, and he had already been famous for sixteen years when that appeared.

Voltaire’s writings, with the exception of the short novel Candide, are little read today. They were, however, very widely read during the eighteenth century, and Voltaire therefore played an important role in the changing climate of opinion that ultimately resulted in the French Revolution. Nor was his influence confined to France: Americans such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin were also acquainted with his works, and many of Voltaire’s ideas have become part of the American political tradition.