Person of the Century

Who has been the most influential or important person in the 20th century? Vote now, and we'll settle this question, right here in the Fray.

res: I agree we used the excuse of Stalin to stay there and rebuild Germany, but, as a Belgian diplomate once pointed out in the 1960's, if the Russians decided to move West a troop of US girlscouts would have been just about as useful a trip wire to nuclear war.

I saw an interesting US film a couple nights ago on Turner Classic Movies. It was made in 1946 or so. It talked about the natural agressiveness og the German's and how we should not trust them. It interspersed films of happy-go-lucky dancing German peasants with films from WWI and WWII, concentration camps, etc. The message was that we were keeping our troops there to make certain the Germans were kept on leash.

Admittedly this was propagada, but to my mind the continued presence of US troops in Germany today, notwithstanding the non-existence of a viable Russian threat and the impending EU, is just evidence that the rest of Europe wants us there. Why? Well, what nation has caused the most mischief in the last 150 years in Europe and which remains the greatest European power?

The expansion of NATO eastward serves little purpose but to piss off Russia -- unless it is an effort to further rein in any German notions of lebensraum. I do not know if Germany ever signed a final pact with Poland, but I know that West German maps as late as 1970 included Pomerania and Silesia as part of Germany, just in the occupied zone.

Stalin would probably be my second choice, but only because Hitler screwed up and did not take him out of the war in 1941.

Calgal:

I looked at the blurb on Emmy Noether (the author refers to her as "Emmy," a sure sign that one is reading the apologia of a sentimental dork).

Okay, so she appeared to have been a great scholar. So somebody wrote a nice paragraph or two about her in a book published in -- when was it now? -- 1974. So Einstein spoke well of her. So what? This has no bearing on my central proposition: that there are certain areas where women basically don't figure as geniuses or historic innovators.

How about Traitorous Wimps of the Century? I nominate the Duke of Windsor.

Ariel:

CG's link gives a pretty decent reference. (I was gonna reply with ETB's description, but it's quoted in there anyway.)

Semi-amusing, albeit totally unrelated, side note: the main thing named after Noether is the class of Noetherian rings, namely those in which every upward chain of ideals must terminate -- as opposed to Artinian rings, where every downward chain must. (Or was it the other way around? It's been a while, and I'm too lazy to go check.) The latter were named after an Emil Artin. Now, I'm told that Artin was Armenian by ethnicity, and that his last name was "Artinian," originally, before he shortened it (presumably, in order to appear less Armenian.) But -- irony of ironies -- the "ian" was appended right back (in English, at least), when it came to making up the term.

Stumbo:

Wait 'til STan finds out; there'll be hell to pay over this Armenian who voluntarily became a Turk.

Socko,

Ha. You can't imagine I seriously had a clue as to what EN did.

I wasn't really serious in using her to refute your proposition. But then, I find it difficult to believe that you're serious when you say, "there are certain areas where women basically don't figure as geniuses or historic innovators."

Historically, I don't think that's true. When you figure how the odds have been against women achieving anything in these fields, the fact that there is a Curie or a Noether is pretty amazing and puts your little proposition to shame.

Consider:

"Women were not actually allowed to be on the faculty at this university, so she would teach classes under Hilbert's name. (The class schedule would show that the course was being taught by David Hilbert, but everyone, including the students, knew that Emmy was teaching it.) In 1919 she was given the rank of "unofficial"

associate professor, a title that carried no salary and no duties, although she did teach."

So she did all this without being paid, and wouldn't have been allowed to do as much as she did if Hilbert hadn't realized how brilliant she was and been willing to help her out.

As far as I'm concerned, that's a lot of shit to go through for love of math. And it's probably (and unfortunately) pretty minor compared to what other women went through. Who knows how many brilliant women didn't have the internal fortitude to put up with it?

In general, I think it's likely there will always be fewer female geniuses in math and science than men. But to say that they don't and won't figure at all is a little too global for me to accept.

Socko:

For one thing, she was a much better mathematician than Einstein, so whether he spoke well of her mathematical expertise or not is pretty irrelevant.

But, more importantly: are you using "scholar" in a pejorative way (at least, as opposed to "historic innovator")? It's not like she merely compiled an encyclopedia of already-known stuff.

OK, here's my pick for Person(s) of the Century. I'm using historical influence, more or less, as a criteria. That is, looking back at the 1800s, I'd probably vote for Napoleon as Most Historically Influential, with Lincoln, Bismark, Queen Victoria, Jefferson, Frederick the Great, John Marshall, Edison, Eli Whitney, and Karl Marx runners-up (among MANY others).

Person of the Century: Adolf Hitler (like it or not)

Runners-up: Joseph Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt, Mohandas Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Woodrow Wilson, Mikhail Gorbachev, Emperor Hirohito, Pope John Paul II, Mao Tse-tung, Deng Xiaoping, Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon.

Honorable Mentions: Lech Walesa, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Dwight Eisenhower, Vladimir Lenin, George Marshall, Harry Truman, Nikita Khrushchev, Nelson Mandela, Boris Yeltsin, T.E. Lawrence, Margaret Thatcher, David Ben-Gurion, Warren Buffett, Henry Ford, JP Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, John Maynard Keynes, John K. Galbraith, The Wright Brothers, Robert Goddard, Werner von Braun, Yuri Gagarin, Neil Armstrong, Paul Volcker, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Jackie Robinson, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Ibn Saud, John von Neumann, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Garth Brooks, Thomas Watson, Bill Gates, Edwin Hubble, Steven Speilberg, Ed Sullivan, Lucille Ball, Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Johnny Carson, Alfred Hitchcock, David Lean, Frank Capra.

Enough for now.

Oops. In my previous post, Frederick the Great didn't belong in the 1800s. I meant to take that out.

Arial the Spirte,

No probleme, becuase he was jsut foolling those stuped Turkes,! He raelly putt one over on those guyes,!

For Personn of the Senturry, you-ve got to chose Cher or Jake Kevorkian,!

Well, I'll throw this out once more:

Message #326

Do most folks feel that Chairman Mao was just a tiny 'blip' on history's radar screen? Is it possible that Uncle Joe and Krushev didn't pour into europe after WW II because they knew that a mean and very powerful "Thug" lived just outside their backdoor and that this Thug believed the Russians were peddling a bogus and revisionist form of communism?

There's an old anecdote told about Stalin. He was planning to annex some more territory that was predominently Catholic or perhaps "liquidate" a few thousand catholics when one of his aides supposedly said that such behavior was bound to piss-off the Pope. Stalin laughed, "The Pope....how many Divisions does he have?"

Stalin knew, on the other hand, that Mao had a great many tough and battle-tested Divisions. He also knew that Mao had joined the nationalist forces in their common-cause defeat of Japan. Mao did what he had to, to achieve his final objective. Pure Marxist dialectic.

China is still a formidable force in the world. Before Mao it had become a 3rd rate, weak and corrupt nation-not even a nation. It is one of the big reasons the people supported Mao. He made them strong again. Xenophobic, but strong.

In this way, this man continues to influence our world today,

verde~

Good list, but 3/4 the people on your honorable mentions list were more important than Reagan and Nixon.

Garth Brooks?

Peartree,

Interesting list. I thought about Wilson, but he always seemed to me to be someone with ideas that never got accepted by everyone—wasn't sure how influential that made him.

Ibn Saud instead of Faisal? Hmm. TE Lawrence is pretty interesting.

I wondered about King as well, but he was only really influential in the US and I didn't see that he had any impact on world history.

Leo Szilard—nice call, if you mean for the work he did as an instigator of US research into nuclear weapons.

I think you're the first one to mention economists. Ms, tsk!

Tansu Ciller is an important woman, but I don't know if Stan would have reservations about that choice.

Here's an interesting thought, perhaps. At the risk of being labeled a capitalistic nationalist, I'd vote for People of the Century to be: The American People.

I think that group, as a whole, has been shown historically this century to have more influence than other groups, such as Germans, Japanese, Britons, Indians, Russians, Women, Muslims, the Jewish people, Catholics, Protestants, Lawyers, Chinese, Coach Potatoes,

or Computer Nerds.

In other words, given all the various groups of people -- say, a minimum of 1 million people who would identify themselves as members in the group, which group was the Group of the Century ???

CoralReef,

Yeah, Garth Brooks. Admittedly, it's getting late and I'm tired, but he pretty much singlehandedly brought country music back from the dead in the 90s. He influenced 10 years of the century, hence, an honorable mention.

CorlRefe,: Tannsu Siller is a Turke, and a murderere, and even worce, an econnomiste,!

PeerTree, The gruop of the Senturry is the Aremenian poeple,! Don-t you think pikking the Amerikans is jsut a tad slef-serving and nasionalitsic,?

Soem of us wish Cuntry musick was still dead,!

CoralReef,

You say more people on my honorable mentions list were more important than Reagan or Nixon. I guess the reason I rate them both as Runners-Up is that they influenced a large chunk of the century.

Under Reagan, the cold war ended and the economic boom of the 1980s began. He influenced national politics beginning in the 60s and 70s,

challenged Ford for the nomination in 76, was elected in 1980, and influenced the last 20 years of the century, or 1/5. That's why George Bush and Bill Clinton don't get on the list, because, in my opinion, they both simply were beneficiaries of his influence.

As for Nixon, he influenced, Vietnam, Russian relations, Chinese relations, and, of course, Watergate. His actions during Watergate influenced politics in America for the next 25 years (during the current debate on Clinton, for instance, Nixon and Watergate have been mentioned).

Related to that, I'd probably have to add Joseph McCarthy to the Honorable Mentions list.

StanGorsian,

Yes, I would agree that it is probably self-serving and nationalistic for me to pick Americans. However, I think they, as a group, have had the most influence compared to any other group in this century.

If you could go into details on how Armenians, as a group, have influenced the century to a greater degree, I would be willing to reconsider my conclusion.

Peartree,

Well, what would tennis be like without Andre Agassi's awesome hair?

It hasn't been the same since his buzzcut.

PE, Message #197

My point is that blues and jazz not only continue to evolve in their own right, but continue to influence more musicians today than I believe the Beatles or Elvis do, performances in the pseudojungleroom in Las Vegas notwithstanding.

Re: architects, I wasn't aware we were looking for our favorites, because none of these people are on my hit parade either. And strip malls have no artistic resonance, so regarding Oscar Niemeyer -- bite your tongue!

The whole discussion of influential people in the arts is moot anyway, as not one of them in any field could compete with FDR/Truman/Stalin/Hitler for the PotC title. I just thought it might be a bit of fun.

Hey, fewer than 10,000 words. Amazing.

CalGal,

I choose Wilson on the Runners-Up list because he ushered America into the global scene (even more than Theodore Roosevelt). After Wilson, America was forevermore a major player in world politics. The Wilsonian idea of the League of Nations eventually led to the United Nations, which influences all nations now (particularly in health care, smallpox, the Korean War, the Persian Gulf conflict, Bosnia, Iraq, China/Taiwan, and Africa). All told, he influenced probably 20-30 years of the century, and gets on my runner-up list.

CalGal,

I put Leo Szilard on the Honorable Mention list both due to his research into nuclear fission, as well as his later efforts to stop nuclear proliferation. Beginning in 1933, he saw how fission could produce a chain reaction, which led to the atom bomb in 1945 AND to nuclear power later in the 50s and 60s (still in use today). His arguments against nuclear proliferation influenced debate about nuclear war in the late 40s and 50s. Here and there, he probably influenced 10 or 15 years of the century, so he gets an honorable mention.

peartree: You think Milton Berle was more influential than Martin Heidegger?

Peertree, I was jsut kiding about Aremenians. but I-m serrius about Amerikan nasionalisme,! Everey cuntry feeles its best, rihgt,? Its unfiar to tell one is beter. Of cuorse Amerikans fell that way, so do I abuot my cuntry,!

CalGal,

Actually, tennis is one of the areas where I think women have dominated more than men. Pete Sampras, John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors, Rod Laver, Roy Emerson, and perhaps even Andre Agassi are good, but I'd say Margaret Court, Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert Lloyd, Staffi Graf and Monica Seles were dominate. As for influential, I'd probably have to pick Connors and McEnroe as having the most influence in the game, but my knowledge only goes back to the early 80s.

I don't think they end up on the Person of the Century list, though.

In a different sport, Jack Nicklaus just *might* end up on the Honorable Mention list, though.

For basketball, I'd have to put Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, John Wooden, Adolf Rupp, and Dean Smith.

Pear,

I was talking about the Armenian connection. Sorry. It's late and I'm getting loopy.

(no comments from the peanut gallery here, please)

My point about Szilard: a contention was made earlier that most scientific discoveries are inevitable, so we were leaving scientists off the list.

And although I think he was important as an anti-nukester, I don't know if that's influential. But his role in getting the US to look at nuclear power (persuading Einstein to write FDR) and fund research in the '30s was pivotal. To the best of my knowledge, no one else has a claim to the part he played.

Just curious--why Ibn Saud instead of Faisal? (Unless it's for fathering the entire Saudi royal family)

CalGal,

Which Faisal are you referring to, Faisal I, Faisal II, or Faisal ibn Abdul-Aziz ? There are a lot of Faisals running around in the 20th century!

For Faisal I (son of Hussein ibn Ali, leader of the Arab Revolt in 1916, King of Syria for a while, then King of Iraq, died in 1933), I felt T E Lawrence was more influential. I don't think Faisal I would have amounted to much had Lawrence not provided the impetus.

For Faisal II (great-grandson of Hussein ibn Ali, King of Iraq, assassinated in 1958), he was just a ruler. Not particularly influential on the global scale.

As for Faisal ibn Abdul-Aziz, (son of ibn Saud, King of Saudi Arabia 1964-1975, assassinated 1975) you definitely have a case,

since he was the prime instigator of the increase in oil prices by OPEC in 1973-74, but his assassination cut his actual years of direct influence short.

Thus, I think King Saud (First King of Saudi Arabia, 1932-53) had more influence, because it was he who united and/or conquered the various Arabic tribes in the first place. He influenced the Arabian peninsula for 30 years, and his sons then continued the influence after his death up until the present day. Thus an Honorable Mention.

Actually, I had King Faisal (ibn Abdul-Aziz) on my list, but replaced him with Ibn Saud after considering the entire century. :-)

CoralReef,

Berle vrs. Heidegger. Just curious, do you think Heidegger was more or less influential than Sartre or de Beauvoir?

As for Berle, he influenced the birth of television, and showed what could be done within that new medium. As host of Texaco Star Theatre in the late 40s through the mid 50s, he pretty much created the 'variety show', and was one of the main reasons people bought televisions during the early years! His direct influence spanned about 8 years. There were later attempts at a comeback, (in 1966) without much success.

Nowadays though, I see more references to 'Uncle Milty' than I do to someone such as Red Skelton, even though Skelton lasted longer. Berle influenced people like Steve Allen, who influenced Carson and Letterman. Berle was in a few movies here and there, too. For his

part in ushering in television in the 20th century, he gets an Honorable Mention.

StanGorsian,

On my choice of Americans vrs any other group, you say:

"Everey cuntry feeles its best, rihgt,? Its unfiar to tell one is beter. "

Please understand, I am not saying that Americans are 'better'

than any other group (at least in this discussion). I'm stating

that Americans were the most influential group of this century.

Had Germany won WW2, Germans, as a group, might have been the most influential. Up until 1991, it might have been debatable between Americans and Russians as for most influence in the 20th century, but now, with the end of the Cold War and the breaking up of Russia, Russian influence has diminished and American influence has increased.

Thus, I say Americans, taken as a group, have had the most influence on the events of the century.

Lumiere bros.?

I think you're all going in the wrong direction: Salk, Einstein, Irving Snodgrass. (these are easy)

Stumbo re:Message #331

Yes, I already noted that my protest is futile.

FWIW, even aside from moral considerations, I don't think Hitler was the most influential person of the century. I actually agree with Res that his influence was minimal past 1946. A case could be made, OTOH, that Stalin would have been a problem for the West regardless of Hitler's presence. That is, the Soviet Union would have become the major aggressor and threat it was anyway, it just would have happened differently.

Hitler also doesn't compare to the impact FDR had on this century, predominantly because FDR pulled the US into the 20th century and kept us smack in the middle of the action. Besides heralding in a host of changes wrt the role of government and it's responsibility to individual citizens.

I'd also have to add my voice to those who question Wilson. I disagree with Peartree that Wilson:

"...ushered America into the global scene (even more than Theodore Roosevelt). After Wilson, America was forevermore a major player in world politics."

The US was not a major player until the second world war. Psychologically, we would not accept the reins of power until FDR. Prior to that, we saw ourselves as removed from world politics, and, in fact, the League of Nations could be said to have failed precisely because we would not take an active role, unlike our determination to make the UN work in the post-WWII era.

After some consideration, I think that I can break my choices down thusly:

Politics - the usual suspects: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, FDR, Churchill, Gandhi, Mao, any of these will do.

Industry - Henry Ford

Science - give it to one of the nuclear crew. Oppenheimer, maybe.

Arts and Culture - Walt Disney. I'm telling you people that Mickey Mouse and his progeny will last at least well into the 22nd Century.

So this peartree fellow gives his vote to the, uh, American People as Entity of the Century. Should we be surprised to see a few posts later (Message #365) that he also has an intense interest in the game of tennis?

Philistine: The clownish Gandhi was of no moment outside of the subcontinent.

Socko,

I agree completely on the issue of Ghandi.

So Gandhi's influence on Dr. King and Dr. King's influence on American events is of no moment?

Nice try, but I'll want more than that.

Philistine:

In terms of modern first causes, it was Tolstoy who blueprinted the idea of pacific protest. Tolstoy was a genius, Martin Luther King a visionary; Gandhi was neither.

As subsequent events have shown, the British would have left India anyway.

Besides, even if Gandhi had an indirect part to play in the course of American civil rights, that still leaves the rest of the world to consider -- most of us out here consider the work of Martin Luther King, great man though he was, to have been a purely domestic American matter. It's quite ludicrous to suggest that he was a meaningful world figure after the fashion of Churchill or Lenin.

MrSocko,

Actually, I have intesrest in several sports, tennis just happening to be one of them.

But think about it. As I was thinking about influence of individuals in the 20th century, I thought that these singular people only did anything because huge groups of people listened to them, or changed their actions or opinions. (That's why Hitler, to me, was more important -- he caused the actions not only of the Germans to change, but also of just about every other major nation in Europe and Western Asia, including Americans, the Russians, the Jewish people, the British, French, Austrians, Czechs, etc etc etc etc).

Up until Hitler, Roosevelt was a major influence of the America people, but it more or less ended at the shoreline. A better case could be made for Stalin. That's why Mao Tse-tung is on my Runners-up list, too.

So, if you look at Person of the Century being the person who impacted or influenced or caused a change in behavior of the most people for the most number of years, you can arrive at a enumeration.

Anyway, while I was thinking this, I thought: Over the entire century, which group, or entity as you put it, was most influential, most important? That is, which group caused a change in behavior/impact of the most numbers of people for the longest time *in another group* ???

I say the American people have done that, this century. Last century I'd probably have to go with the British, with the French a very close second.

However, for this century, I think a case could be made for, say, women, taken as a group. Or the Germans, taken as a group.

Which Entity would you say had the most influence outside of their own Entity?

Andy Warhol. Nuff said.

Philistine,

I like your choice for Disney. If you take my "most numbers of people impacted/affected for the longest duration", you might even be able to argue that Disney has had MORE influence than Oppenheimer or anyone on the nuclear crew. Amazing.

Maybe people like Disney, Capra, D W Griffith, Eisenstaedt, Hitchcock etc are merely the Beethovens, Bachs, Mozarts etc of our day.

I wonder where the group "people who have seen a Disney movie" would fall on the Entity scale.

Watching CBS Sunday Morning show as I write this, and they're promo-ing an upcoming review of the 100 People who "made" the century. So everybody will get a quick "Biography"-style rehash of all the dictators and mass murderers who have so bedazzled so many fraysters.

Socko - You'r failure to see the courage, power and beauty of Gandhi to influence the minds and hearts of humanity without resorting to murder and mayhem astonishes me. Within the context of a single person living a life and struggling to achieve an unimagineable goal with an unarmed army of impoverished believers takes more brains, courage and tenacity than any of the inadvertent influence that you attribute to some of these other people. You continually focus on quantity of influence over quality of action every time you make a point. Why do we have to look at influence upon the world as how many people died or suffered as a result of their actions? It takes more arrogance than intellectual prowess, IMO, to call Gandhi a clown--or were you joking?.

Irv

I agree with your observation about Warhol.

Today, the most an ordinary person can hope for is a sound bite of fame.

peartree -- If I were to pick a group, it would probably be the Jews.

RobertDente -- Gandhi may well have done great things for India. He remains of no global or international moment.

cllrdr -- Drella: a nice choice.

Mr. Socko,

That would depend on how much emphasis you place on his influence on MLK, who actually went to India and studied Gandhi's practice of civil disobedience carefully, using it very effectively here.

I didn't list any sports people becuase they don't have a prayer of being the most influential. But if you do create a sports category, surely Ali is at or near the top of the list.

CalGal

> Why is it that bad guys leave such a bigger wake?

It's easier to destroy than to create.

FreeToChoose,

Do you think Jackie Robinson had no influence?

This notion of putting entertainers, hollywood marketeers and hypsters, and sports people in the same league with the important political, social or cultural (art, music, science, technology, etc) figures is, well, absurd.

I register another ignored protest.

MsIt

So, there was no big groundswell for Xena, I take it.

No, SexL

There wasn't, but go ahead and make your case. Seems like you are in good company.

MsIT;

I personally wouldn't put a sports or entertainment figure atop my list of "Person(s) of the Century." However, people such as a Jackie Robinson or a Muhammad Ali caused far-reaching changes in society that transcended their excellence in a given sport.

MsIt

Well, she has large breasts, and, um . . . okay, I withdraw and stick with my original entrant - Churchill.

JG

I grant you a Jackie Robinson. Ali doesn't strike me as very inspired for this sort of choice. But then, I disagree with placing sports figures on this level of importance.

SexL

Your half-hearted (pun intended) attempts to get Xena on the list are not very impressive.

Adolph Hitler, liebling Fuerher

Ooops I forgot - Ken Starr

MsIt

Well, she does save her own world on a daily basis. But okay, and don't get mad, but just try the next one on, Don't buy, just wear it for a bit - Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

peartree

Of course. Not as much as Ali, on a world-wide scale. I once read that Ali was the world's best-known person. Not sure if it is still true (or if it ever was)

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