40 of the Most Influential People of All Time
40 of the Most Influential People of All Time

40 of the Most Influential People of All Time

Trista - January 29, 2019

40 of the Most Influential People of All Time
The Vitruvian Man (c. 1485) Accademia, Venice by Leonardo da Vinci. Wikimedia Commons/ Public Domain.

4. Leonardo da Vinci

The ultimate “Renaissance Man,” Leonardo da Vinci was an artist, scientist, writer, botanist, musician, polymath, inventor, you name it, he could do it. Even if you can’t name it, he could probably do it. He painted masterpieces such as The Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. His enigmatic notebooks, which are sometimes written backward, contain drawings of things like prototype helicopters and anatomical depictions of humans. He is widely regarded to be one of the most widely-talented people who ever lived.

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40 of the Most Influential People of All Time
Portrait of Isaac Newton (1642-1727).This a copy of a painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller (1689). Wikimedia Commons/ Public Domain.

3. Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton is probably most famous for his discovery of gravity, which explains both why things fall to earth and why planets stay in orbit around the sun. When he needed to make measurements that involved a form of math that didn’t exist, he invented a new branch of math: calculus. He wrote down many of his discoveries in a book called Principia, which is still considered a masterpiece. His findings were used by Einstein over two centuries later.

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40 of the Most Influential People of All Time
Albert Einstein during a lecture in Vienna in 1921. Ferdinand Schmutzer/ NHM/ Wikimedia Commons/ Public Domain.

2. Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was a theoretical physicist who emigrated to the United States and remained there after Hitler rose to power in his native Germany. He discovered general relativity, then supplemented it with special relativity to fill in some of the gaps. Einstein also studied things like the photoelectric effect, which helped form the basis for quantum physics. During World War II, he was recruited for the Manhattan Project so that he could help develop the technology for the atomic bomb.

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40 of the Most Influential People of All Time
Christus Pantocrator – Artistic representation of Jesus Christ God, the second divine Person of the Most Holy Trinity (Cathedral of Cefalù, c. 1130.). Andreas Wahra/ Wikimedia Commons/ Public Domain.

1. Jesus Christ

Jesus was not the founder of the religion that bears his name; he was actually a Jewish carpenter he traveled as an itinerant preacher and worked miracles. After his death and resurrection, his followers initially remained part of the Jewish religion until they were completely expelled from the synagogues. Today, two billion Christians worldwide profess to be followers of Jesus, and he is also a prominent figure in Islam. In fact, many Muslims also claim to be followers of Jesus.

 

Where Did We Find This Stuff? Here Are Our Sources:

“Confucius.” Wikipedia.

“The Most Influential People of All Time.” Ranker.

“Nikola Tesla.” Wikipedia.

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