And the most important person in the world is...

July 30, 2015 11:25 AM

Who is the greatest person who has ever lived? Those ranking by deaths prevented have put forth Norman Borlaug (over 1 billion), Viktor Zhdanov (300 million), Haber and Bosch (2.7 billion, but then there's the war crimes thing), and, of course, Stanislav Petrov (everyone). Lists of the most important people are often decided by popular vote, with Gutenberg, Einstein, and Darwin generally doing well, but don't count yourself out. More recently, as Cass Sunstein entertainingly covers, there have also been quantitative attempts to measure the most important person., including, most recently, a detailed algorithm by a computer science professor and a Google engineer that tells us that the most important people are, in order: Jesus, Napoleon, Shakespeare, and Muhammed. Smithsonian magazine commissioned them to come up with a special list of the most important Americans. You can also play a historical importance version of the who's hotter game using their algorithm.
posted by blahblahblah (51 comments total)

the most important people are, in order: Jesus, Napoleon, Shakespeare, and Muhammed.

Close! According to my brother's college friend, a fellow not actually named Tom Rock, who was apparently very conservative and PROFOUNDLY from New Jersey, the list is:

1) Jesus
2) Tom Rock
3) Tom Rock's Mom
4) Ronald Reagan
5) Jason Kidd, then Center for the New Jersey Nets
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 11:34 AM on July 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

I remember being about seven years old, and the kind of kid who would just as soon talk to the teachers as other kids. I would ask them, Who's the best - ? Who was the most - ? because I believed there were answers to these questions. Rather than tell me that there were no such answers, the teachers would be startled into answering, and I remember a bit of what they said.

Who was the smartest person who ever lived? Albert Einstein. Who was the most beautiful woman who ever lived? Marilyn Monroe. Who was the best writer there ever was? Ernest Hemingway. Who was the . . . Honey, I'm busy. Run along now.

I remember these few answers because I believed them, and they have a certain mid-century middlebrow charm to them.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:34 AM on July 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

and PROFOUNDLY from New Jersey

1) Jesus The Boss

fixed that for you
posted by the_blizz at 11:47 AM on July 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

More cogent is the complaint that our results are culturally biased because we analyse only the English edition of Wikipedia. How can we fairly assess the significance of Chinese poets against US presidents? We agree that any ranking of historical significance is indeed culturally dependent and so, yes, our rankings have an Anglocentric bias. But the depth of Wikipedia is so great that there are hundreds of articles about Chinese poets in the English edition.


They essentially use Wikipedia? Also, that excuse is pretty weak sauce.


One of the Guardian commenters actually lists some obvious oversights:

...here's a bunch of alternatives:-

Mao Zedong (Founding father of modern China)

Genghis Khan (Founder of the Mongul's - at his height his empire dwarves Hitler's best efforts)

J. Robert Oppenheimer (inventory of the nuclear bomb)

Nelson Mandela (no introduction required)

Mulla Sadra (one of the most important Islamic philosophers of all time)

Pachacuti (founded in the Inca Empire in S America)

Henry Ford (brought the world mass production and revolutionised the auto and aviation industries)

Confucious (Philosopher, he was Chinese)

Indira Gandhi (Hopefully no introduction required)

Pol Pot (Cambodian ruler - killed over 20% of his population)

Yaa Asantewa - became known by the British as the Joan D'Arc of Africa. The troops in Ghana fought in her name in the Yaa Asantewa War.

Simon Bolivar - general and politician. Forced the Spanish out of the Northern part of S America. Responsible for the liberation of what we now know as Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia.

etc etc.
posted by vacapinta at 11:50 AM on July 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

Jesus, Napoleon, Shakespeare, and Muhammad walk into a bar.
posted by condour75 at 11:51 AM on July 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Thanks for the post/links--took me to some people I did not, and should have, known.
posted by rmhsinc at 11:53 AM on July 30, 2015

The ranking of deaths prevented is a pretty fascinating list, in which I'm going to spend some serious time learning about people and ideas.

But there's at least one category that got left out (unless I missed it): weather prediction. Satellites, more advanced meteorology techniques, weather reporting/broadcasting. . . as much as we complain about the state of meteorology, being able to predict the weather and disseminate information about threats like hurricanes is a pretty important advancement for saving lives. It's very probable it's not as important as health/medicine or food, and I suppose it's a little harder to evaluate the number of saved lives (along with the frustration of how predicting a hurricane in the U.S. has a different result than a typhoon hitting Bangladesh), but over the years surely it's added up to more than a million lives? Although maybe there are more "team" efforts involved in that than individual ones, adding to the difficulty. (Branches from this category also include clean air advocates and hopefully in the future climate research.)

Also forgotten: Claire Patterson, whose campaign and work with lead poisoning is pretty important, but perhaps also hard to quantify for actual "life saving".
posted by barchan at 11:54 AM on July 30, 2015 [5 favorites]

maybe it's a group effort? like if one considers ourselves a part of some (multiple!) superorganism :P
posted by kliuless at 11:59 AM on July 30, 2015

"I have most delayed the inevitable!" - Greatest Hero Ever.
posted by srboisvert at 12:02 PM on July 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

Who is the greatest person who has ever lived? Those ranking by deaths prevented postponed.

FTFY
posted by blue_beetle at 12:03 PM on July 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

"Lives saved" and "deaths prevented" are rather loaded phrases, and hard measurements to make. For instance, the inventor(s) of the birth control pill should arguably get as much credit as those helping to prevent famine by improving plant production, as there would less need for the latter if the former were more readily available and used.
posted by tempestuoso at 12:04 PM on July 30, 2015 [4 favorites]

Indira Gandhi (Hopefully no introduction required)

Perhaps this was meant to be Mohandas K. Gandhi?
posted by briank at 12:05 PM on July 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Although I'm good with saying Stanislav Petrov is, for us, the most important human being that ever lived.
posted by vacapinta at 12:17 PM on July 30, 2015 [7 favorites]

In the history of humans? Obviously, the most important person who ever lived was Mitochondrial Eve.
posted by maxsparber at 12:21 PM on July 30, 2015 [13 favorites]

I keep a framed picture of Petrov on my desk.
posted by echocollate at 12:23 PM on July 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Dolly Parton, I'll fight you!
posted by Divine_Wino at 12:24 PM on July 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

More recently, as Cass Sunstein entertainingly covers, there have also been quantitative attempts to measure the most important person ...

I think collecting matchbooks or pieces of string would be a much more rewarding hobby.
posted by octobersurprise at 12:28 PM on July 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Shakespeare?!!?
posted by Hoopo at 12:31 PM on July 30, 2015

Once I saw that "lives saved" was going to be a criterion, I was planning to put up Petrov's name before I read further and saw that he was already there.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:34 PM on July 30, 2015

From the Wikipedia:

Nearly 80% of the nitrogen found in human tissues originated from the Haber-Bosch process.

There are sci-fi fantasies about people being made in factories. As a matter of fact, we're already partially there, thanks to Haber and Bosch.
posted by clawsoon at 12:36 PM on July 30, 2015 [8 favorites]

cntl+f "mahatma gandhi" No Results. Major bummer dudes.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:40 PM on July 30, 2015

Playing the Who's Bigger game is pretty fun, you can pick by gravitas and significance as well as fame. You can also look at bios of people you don't know. I have had Thomas Paine versus Chevy Chase, and Camille Paglia versus Jack the Ripper (really). Also, for some reason, they are showing a picture of Leonardo da Vinci as Gerald Ford. If there is a bias in the game, it a very odd one.
posted by blahblahblah at 12:41 PM on July 30, 2015

In the history of humans? Obviously, the most important person who ever lived was Mitochondrial Eve.

You must mean the first human/Cylon hybrid Hera Agathon, daughter of Helo and Boomer.
posted by Falconetti at 12:59 PM on July 30, 2015 [6 favorites]

You must mean the first human/Cylon hybrid Hera Agathon, daughter of Helo and Boomer.

Too soon.
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:03 PM on July 30, 2015 [7 favorites]

Camille Paglia versus Jack the Ripper
This was actually a thing on Salon.com in the 90s. Camille won.
You should have seen her fatality move.
posted by Svejk at 1:12 PM on July 30, 2015

One problem with efforts like this, as vacapinta's list shows, is that it's conflating "greatest" with "most important". The FPP does this too.

The first link seems to be using "greatest" in terms of "helped the most people", but then the other links are about "most important". The most important person ever is probably not going to be the "greatest" if "greatest" means helping people.
posted by Sangermaine at 1:17 PM on July 30, 2015

Why isn't Stanislav Petrov sharing the credit with Vasili Arkhipov, who also saved everyone?
posted by busted_crayons at 1:18 PM on July 30, 2015 [11 favorites]

The special list of important Americans includes Sarah Palin, so fuck that list.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 1:22 PM on July 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

The special list of important Americans includes Sarah Palin, so fuck that list.

And George W. Bush ranks above Franklin Roosevelt. They say they corrected for recency bias, but I don't believe them.
posted by clawsoon at 1:36 PM on July 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

Jesus, Napoleon, Shakespeare, and Muhammad walk into a bar.

Bartender says, "What is this? Some kind of joke?"
posted by BozoBurgerBonanza at 1:54 PM on July 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

"Lives saved" and "deaths prevented" are rather loaded phrases, and hard measurements to make.

Also you just don't know about counterfactuals. Maybe the person who prevented the most deaths was Hitler or Dubya because in one of their wars they happened to kill someone who would have gone on to breed and release Captain Trips.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:43 PM on July 30, 2015

cntl+f "mahatma gandhi" No Results. Major bummer dudes.

Try again with just "gandhi"
posted by iotic at 2:51 PM on July 30, 2015

where is MY recognition for deaths prevented? all the people i haven't stabbed on the subway alone is an incredible feat.
posted by poffin boffin at 2:58 PM on July 30, 2015 [6 favorites]

Well if we're counting "murders not committed" one has to wonder whether deciding not to murder somebody on two separate occasions counts double. There are a few individuals I have failed to murder on a sufficiently high number of occasions that my personal count would equate to preventing the Mongol conquest of the Song dynasty.
posted by Ryvar at 3:16 PM on July 30, 2015

Dolly Parton, I"ll fight you!

You can try, but she'll win.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 3:30 PM on July 30, 2015

I hadn't heard of Arkhipov.

Cuban missile crisis: Despite being in international waters, the Americans started dropping practice depth charges, explosives intended to force the submarine to come to the surface for identification...The captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, believing that a war might already have started, wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo...Three officers needed to agree...An argument broke out among the three, in which only Arkhipov was against the launch.

It's a miracle that we made it out of the 20th century alive.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 3:30 PM on July 30, 2015 [4 favorites]

Astonishingly, Arkhipov played a major role in saving the world twice. He was also the first officer aboard K-19 when the heroic effort of the crew (at the cost of seven lives) prevented a catastrophic reactor meltdown which had a reasonable chance of being misinterpreted, by the Americans, as an attack. Indeed, Arkhipov's experience aboard that ship might well have steeled him for the crisis aboard B-59.

Heh... I just read the abbreviated Wikipedia description of the B-59 incident... it was way worse than that little bit of text makes it sound.

B-59 was a Project 641 "Foxtrot" submarine, designed to operate in the frigid waters of the high Arctic. As such, the builders had not thought to equip her with air conditioning. Having sailed straight through a hurricane, breaking much of the sub's critical equipment (including their long-range radio), B-59 found herself in the Sargasso Sea where the water is near body temperature -- temperatures on board the sub began to rise dramatically. By the time of the crisis, on the 27th of October, it was about 45°C (113°F) in most of the submarine, 60° in the engine spaces (140°F). Humidity was unbearable - crew were unable to cool themselves by sweating, and men were begging to pass out from heat exhaustion. The submarine had been 'held down' so long by nearby US ships that the CO₂ in the atmosphere were nearing toxic levels, and the batteries were almost completely flat. With no way to communicate, the crew had no way to tell whether or not war had broken out, and it was clear to everybody that staying submerged for much longer would mean death by suffocation or heat or both.

It was in that juncture that the Americans started depth charging them. A few days earlier, responding to the incorrect assumption that the submarines were there to protect the ships carrying the nuclear weapons, Kennedy asked McNamarra what they were going to do to force the subs away from their supposed wards. For reasons we don't understand, McNamarra responded that the Navy had worked out a signal whereby they would order submarines to the surface with three 'practice depth charges' (PDC's). These were simply hand grenades wrapped in toilet paper. You pull the pin, and wrap the paper around the grenade so that it holds the lever down. You know how quickly the paper will disintegrate in water, so you wrap it around the specified number of times you need to set off the explosive at a given depth. A simple, low-tech, almost comical device by which to destroy the world.

News of this signal was passed on to Moscow who failed to pass it on to the submarines at sea. It must have made no sense to the Soviets. After all, there was a well established system by which one could order submarines to the surface with three blasts of active sonar. So they never told the crew of B-59, who had no idea what it meant when the explosions started.

According to archival sources, two PDC signals were dropped on B-59 by US Ships Cony and Beale -- fast destroyers attached to the battle group of the aircraft carrier USS Randolph. The deck logs specify that they dropped grenades into the water; B-59 should have experienced them as audible, but small, bangs.

We don't know what happened. Maybe the crew were just hysterical in the heat and stink of their broken submarine, maybe (as has been suggested) the grenades from either Cony or Beale actually physically hit the submarine. One sailor aboard B-59 described the experience as being akin to sitting in an oil drum while somebody whaled on the outside with a sledge hammer. As far as we know, nobody aboard B-59 had ever actually experienced a real depth charge attack, and these explosions must have seemed very much like the real thing. Had war broken out? If not, then why were they under attack?

Accounts differ widely on what happened next, but it seems as if there was a debate lasing some hours in the forward compartment of the submarine. Various accounts agree that Arkhipov's obstinate resistance to the launch of the nuclear torpedo prevented an attack on USS Randolph and her escorting ships.

Had his vote gone the other way, the US ships would have been devastated in the blast. There is an amazing picture of what happened to USS Independence when a nuclear bomb was dropped nearby her during the Operation Crossroads nuclear test. Her whole structure was spectacularly twisted in the blast. Had she been crewed at the time, there would have been few survivors. There would, nevertheless, have been plenty of ships in the area to see that the US Navy was being attacked with nuclear weapons. Kennedy had made it clear to his staff that an attack with tactical nuclear weapons would have caused him to launch nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union, and full-scale nuclear war would have been almost inevitably triggered.

We don't know whether humanity, as a species, would have survived full nuclear 'exchange' in 1962, but it seems probable that they would not have. Thus it was that this one vote became the most dangerous moment in all of human history. One vote, made the difference between civilisation and chaos, between life or death for the human species. One vote from one, spectacularly level-headed, heroically competent man -- not in the White House or Kremlin, but in the reeking, stifling, forward compartment of a broken submarine, swimming in the blood-warm waters of the Sargasso Sea.
posted by Dreadnought at 4:43 PM on July 30, 2015 [21 favorites]

I like Arkhipov for this but the conflict was primarily a soviet provocation. Plus, they sent these guys out in crappy boats with little to no plan.

I'm going with Newton.
posted by clavdivs at 4:48 PM on July 30, 2015

Part of the problem of these kinds of rankings is that sometimes we can tend to conflate "most important" or "most significant" with "greatest".

On the "most significant" side, I'd like to give a shout-out to Thomas Midgley, Jr., developer of both leaded gasoline and CFCs. Between atmospheric lead and depletion of the ozone layer, I've heard it said that no single organism has had a greater impact on the Earth's atmosphere than this dude.

clavdivs: "I like Arkhipov for this but the conflict was primarily a soviet provocation."

*cough* Jupiter missiles in Turkey *cough*
posted by mhum at 6:41 PM on July 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

*Shirley Maclaine* "WELL"
posted by clavdivs at 6:57 PM on July 30, 2015

Where is Joseph Lister? By understanding the importance of sanitation in the surgery because of the germ theory of disease, he essentially made it possible for everyone who has ever had an invasive medical procedure to survive it.
posted by Bringer Tom at 7:02 PM on July 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

I always forget Stanislav Petrov's name, yet the moment I see it I'm like "Isn't that the guy...?"

tl;dr - Stanislav Petrov is most definitely The Guy
posted by comealongpole at 7:12 PM on July 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Interesting that the best pizza in the U.S. thread above has three times as many comments as this one. Glad to see we have our priorities straight.
posted by TedW at 7:46 PM on July 30, 2015

nice, yeah, please do not include Sarah Palin in any lists of anything.

thank you.
posted by gkr at 9:10 PM on July 30, 2015

stanislav petrov, ytmnd! :P
posted by kliuless at 9:41 PM on July 30, 2015

Haber: What is the Process? Control. The Process is a chemically-generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a bag of nitrogen fertiliser...into this.

[holds up a baby]

Neo: No, I don't believe it. It's not possible.

Bosch: We didn't say it would be easy, Neo. We just said it would be the truth.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 9:52 PM on July 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

I hate these pop algorithm things (or more precisely the press they get) with a passion.

You make up a set of parameters (wikipedia mentions, say) that make sense, feed in data, and then you look at the output. If it's not close to what you would come up with on your own without an algorithm, you add another parameter (period they lived) and check again. Add parameters and change weighting until the output seems to match your intuition ("Jesus and Shakespeare in the top 5. We've nailed it, Bob!")

This clearly has no more value than a pundit scribbling down just a bunch of names to begin with. But with an algorithm you feed it to the gullible press, who will treat the output as "objective" and as an added bonus all the leftover bits that don't match anyone's intuition is now "insightful."
posted by mark k at 9:54 PM on July 30, 2015 [5 favorites]

I'm going with Newton

Meh, alchemist and Christian-eschatology enthusiast who, as master of the Mint, enjoyed watching the executions of counterfeiters. Voluminous writings include a comparatively small amount of science in a sea of what some even at the time would have recognized as woo.

If you want calculus to be honoured in such a list, and you also want, basically, a prototypical version of the modern notion of an algorithm, as well as some of the ideas underlying digital computers, go with Leibniz instead.
posted by busted_crayons at 3:38 AM on July 31, 2015

An Internet popularity contest with no love for Konrad Zuse?

Bah.
posted by flabdablet at 4:23 AM on July 31, 2015 [1 favorite]

mark k: "Add parameters and change weighting until the output seems to match your intuition"

From what I've heard, this is more or less how the US News & World Report college rankings work. They change their ranking criteria from time to time and if Harvard, Princeton, and Yale don't end up in the top three slots (in any order, gotta keep it interesting), they tweak it until they do.
posted by mhum at 3:37 PM on July 31, 2015 [2 favorites]

Newton: full of woo and a hidden lust for gold.

Fine, I'm going with Zuse.
posted by clavdivs at 7:51 AM on August 1, 2015