أعظم 100 شخصية - مقتطفات تعليمية

يقول مايكل هارت في مقدمة كتابه العظماء مائة :
إن اختياري محمداً، ليكون الأول في أهم وأعظم رجال التاريخ، قد يدهش القراء، ولكنه الرجل الوحيد في التاريخ كله الذي نجح أعلى نجاح على المستويين: الديني والدنيوي.
فهناك رُسل وأنبياء وحكماء بدءوا رسالات عظيمة، ولكنهم ماتوا دون إتمامها، كالمسيح في المسيحية، أو شاركهم فيها غيرهم، أو سبقهم إليهم سواهم، كموسى في اليهودية، ولكن محمداً هو الوحيد الذي أتم رسالته الدينية، وتحددت أحكامها، وآمنت بها شعوب بأسرها في حياته. ولأنه أقام جانب الدين دولة جديدة، فإنه في هذا المجال الدنيوي أيضاً، وحّد القبائل في شعـب، والشعوب في أمة، ووضع لها كل أسس حياتها، ورسم أمور دنياها، ووضعها في موضع الانطلاق إلى العالم. أيضاً في حياته، فهو الذي بدأ الرسالة الدينية والدنيوية، وأتمها.

مــــــــــحــــــــــمــــــــــد صــلــى الــلــه عــلــيــه و ســلــم

1
Muhammad
Islam
Prophet of Islam; Hart recognized that ranking Muhammad first might be controversial, but felt that, from a secular historian's perspective, this was the correct choice because Muhammad is the only man to have been both a founder of a major world religion and a major military/political leader.

2
Isaac Newton
Anglican (rejected Trinitarianism;
believed in the Arianism of
the Primitive Church)
physicist; theory of universal gravitation; laws of motion

3
Jesus Christ
Judaism; Christianity
founder of Christianity

4
Buddha
Hinduism; Buddhism
founder of Buddhism

5
Confucius
Confucianism
founder of Confucianism

6
St. Paul
Judaism; Christianity
proselytizer of Christianity

7
Ts'ai Lun
Chinese traditional religion
inventor of paper

8
Johann Gutenberg
Catholic
developed movable type; printed Bibles

9
Christopher Columbus
Catholic
explorer; led Europe to Americas

10
Albert Einstein
Jewish
physicist; relativity; Einsteinian physics

11
Louis Pasteur
Catholic
scientist; pasteurization

12
Galileo Galilei
Catholic
astronomer; accurately described heliocentric solar system

13
Aristotle
Platonism / Greek philosophy
influential Greek philosopher

14
Euclid
Platonism / Greek philosophy
mathematician; Euclidian geometry

15
Moses
Judaism
major prophet of Judaism

16
Charles Darwin
Anglican (nominal)
biologist; described Darwinian evolution, which had theological impact on many religions

17
Shih Huang Ti
Chinese traditional religion
Chinese emperor

18
Augustus Caesar
Roman state paganism
ruler

19
Nicolaus Copernicus
Catholic (priest)
astronomer; taught heliocentricity

20
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier
Catholic
father of modern chemistry; philosopher; economist

21
Constantine the Great
Roman state paganism; Christianity
Roman emperor who made Christianity the state religion

22
James Watt
nonreligious
developed steam engine

23
Michael Faraday
Sandemanian
physicist; chemist; discovery of magneto-electricity

24
James Clerk Maxwell
Presbyterian; Anglican; Baptist
physicist; electromagnetic spectrum

25
Martin Luther
Catholic; Lutheran
founder of Protestantism and Lutheranism

26
George Washington
Episcopalian; Deist
first president of United States

27
Karl Marx
Jewish; Christian;
Atheist; Marxism/Communism
founder of Communism

28
Orville and Wilbur Wright
United Brethren
inventors of airplane

29
Genghis Khan
Mongolian shamanism
Mongol conqueror

30
Adam Smith
Liberal Protestant
economist; expositor of capitalism; religious philosopher

31
Edward de Vere
a.k.a. "William Shakespeare"
Christianity
literature; also wrote 6 volumes about philosophy and religion

32
John Dalton
Quaker
chemist; physicist; atomic theory; law of partial pressures (Dalton's law)

33
Alexander the Great
Greek state paganism
conqueror

34
Napoleon Bonaparte
Catholic (nominal)
French conqueror

35
Thomas Edison
Congregationalist; agnostic
inventor of light bulb, phonograph, etc.

36
Antony van Leeuwenhoek
Calvinist
microscopes; studied microscopic life

37
William T.G. Morton
??
pioneer in anesthesiology

38
Guglielmo Marconi
Catholic and Anglican
inventor of radio

39
Adolf Hitler
born into but later rejected Catholicism; allegedly a proponent of Germanic Neo-Paganism; Nazism
conqueror; led Axis Powers in WWII

40
Plato
Platonism / Greek philosophy
founder of Platonism

41
Oliver Cromwell
Puritan (Protestant)
British political and military leader

42
Alexander Graham Bell
Unitarian/Universalist
inventor of telephone

43
Alexander Fleming
Catholic
penicillin; advances in bacteriology, immunology and chemotherapy

44
John Locke
raised Puritan (Anglican);
Liberal Christian
philosopher and liberal theologian

45
Ludwig van Beethoven
Catholic
composer

46
Werner Heisenberg

discovered the principle of uncertainty

47
Louis Daguerre
??
an inventor/pioneer of photography

48
Simon Bolivar
Catholic (nominal); Atheist
National hero of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia

49
Rene Descartes
Catholic
Rationalist philosopher and mathematician

50
Michelangelo
Catholic
painter; sculptor; architect

51
Pope Urban II
Catholic
called for First Crusade

52
'Umar ibn al-Khattab
Islam
Second Caliph; expanded Muslim empire

53
Asoka
Buddhism
king of India who converted to and spread Buddhism

54
St. Augustine
Christianity
Early Christian theologian

55
William Harvey
Anglican (nominal)
described the circulation of blood; wrote Essays on the Generation of Animals, the basis for modern embryology

56
Ernest Rutherford
??
physicist; pioneer of subatomic physics

57
John Calvin
Protestant; Calvinism
Protestant reformer; founder of Calvinism

58
Gregor Mendel
Catholic (monk)
Mendelian genetics

59
Max Planck
Protestant
physicist; thermodynamics

60
Joseph Lister
Quaker
principal discoverer of antiseptics which greatly reduced surgical mortality

61
Nikolaus August Otto
??
built first four-stroke internal combustion engine

62
Francisco Pizarro
Catholic
Spanish conqueror in South America; defeated Incas

63
Hernando Cortes
Catholic
conquered Mexico for Spain; through war and introduction of new diseases he largely destroyed Aztec civilization

64
Thomas Jefferson
Episcopalian; Deist
3rd president of United States

65
Queen Isabella I
Catholic
Spanish ruler

66
Joseph Stalin
Russian Orthodox; Atheist; Marxism
revolutionary and ruler of USSR

67
Julius Caesar
Roman state paganism
Roman emperor

68
William the Conqueror
Catholic
laid foundation of modern England

69
Sigmund Freud
Jewish (non-practicing); Atheist
Freudian psychology/psychoanalysis
founder of Freudian school of psychology; psychoanalysis

70
Edward Jenner
Christianity
discoverer of the vaccination for smallpox

71
Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen
??
discovered X-rays

72
Johann Sebastian Bach
Lutheran; Catholic
composer

73
Lao Tzu
Taoism
founder of Taoism

74
Voltaire
raised in Jansenism;
later Deist
writer and philosopher; wrote Candide

75
Johannes Kepler
Lutheran
astronomer; planetary motions

76
Enrico Fermi
Catholic
initiated the atomic age; father of atom bomb

77
Leonhard Euler
Calvinist
physicist; mathematician; differential and integral calculus and algebra

78
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
born Protestant;
converted as a teen to Catholic;
later Deist
French deistic philosopher and author

79
Nicoli Machiavelli
Catholic
wrote The Prince (influential political treatise)

80
Thomas Malthus
Anglican (cleric)
economist; wrote Essay on the Principle of Population

81
John F. Kennedy
Catholic
president of United States

82
Gregory Pincus
Jewish
endocrinologist; developed birth-control pill

83
Mani
Manicheanism
founder of Manicheanism, once a world religion which rivaled Christianity in strength

84
Lenin
Russian Orthodox;
Atheist; Marxism/Communism [more]
Russian ruler

85
Sui Wen Ti
Chinese traditional religion
unified China

86
Vasco da Gama
Catholic
navigator; discovered route from Europe to India around Cape Hood

87
Cyrus the Great
Zoroastrianism
founder of Persian empire

88
Peter the Great
Russian Orthodox
forged Russia into a great European nation

89
Mao Zedong
Atheist; Communism; Maoism
founder of Maoism, Chinese form of Communism

90
Francis Bacon
Anglican
philosopher; delineated inductive scientific method

91
Henry Ford
Protestant
developed automobile; achievement in manufacturing and assembly

92
Mencius
Confucianism
philosopher; founder of a school of Confucianism

93
Zoroaster
Zoroastrianism
founder of Zoroastrianism

94
Queen Elizabeth I
Anglican
British monarch; restored Church of England to power after Queen Mary

95
Mikhail Gorbachev
Russian Orthodox
Russian premier who helped end Communism in USSR

96
Menes
Egyptian paganism
unified Upper and Lower Egypt

97
Charlemagne
Catholic
Holy Roman Empire created with his baptism in 800 AD

98
Homer
Greek paganism
epic poet

99
Justinian I
Catholic
Roman emperor; reconquered Mediterranean empire; accelerated Catholic-Monophysite schism

100
Mahavira
Hinduism; Jainism
founder of Jainism