John Snow
For finally convincing westerners that microbes exist. Which got the ball rolling on like, actual medicine.
That's all.
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John Snow
For finally convincing westerners that microbes exist. Which got the ball rolling on like, actual medicine.
That's all.
Louis Pasteur?
His milk is so passé. Louis Microfilter has much better stuff these days
Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press.
I suspect that one is overrated, actually. He did one step in a long, gradual process. He gets credit mainly because it was big for Europe, who right at that moment in history invented proper seafaring and spread themselves and his name all over the place.
But if you think the internet and social media as the continuation of that tradition - maybe that was a mistake after all. /s
Fritz Haber, the Veritasium video about him is fascinating (The Man who Killed Milioms and Saved Bilions). He developed the chemical process to efficiently synthesize ammonia, one of the key discoveries that allowed mass adoption of fertilizers and the incredibly rapid growth of the human population in the 20th century (you could say that thanks to him, bilions of people could live and be fed by modern agriculture).
Tragically, he also had a fundamental role in developing chemical weapons during WWI, although he belived their use would reduce the number of deaths as army would simply avoid gassed zones, so who knows if he really intended and believed in the milions of deaths he caused. Ironically, he also helped developing Zyklon B during the rise of nazism (while it was still used as a pesticide), but was quickly forced to flee from Germany because of jewish origin. Later, his last invention would be used to kill even more people.
There's also a Sabaton song, "Father", about him.
That's where I first heard about him. Thanks, Spotify. I've learned more about European history from Sabaton and Iron Maiden than I have from school.
Someone else mention Borlaug in this thread, and it shows how no single person necessarily changed anything on their own, and how it's difficult to put all the success as the result of a single person. Borlaug's success was only possible by building on Haber's work, just like Haber worked with Carl Bosch to accomplish what he did, and so on.
Seven Billion Humans: The World Fritz Haber Made
Haber therefore revolutionized the entire course of world history. The transformation of Asia and the emergence of China and India as giant, modern 21st-century global economies would never have been possible without Norman Borlaug’s miracle rice strains. But they could never have been grown had Haber not “extracted bread from air,” as his fellow Nobel laureate Max von Laue put it. Borlaug’s “miracle” strains of rice and grain require exceptionally vast inputs of the nitrate fertilizer that is still made from the process Fritz Haber discovered.
These fertilizers also require enormous inputs of oil. This means the dream of an oil-free world can never happen. Even if eternal, ever-renewable free energy could be harnessed from the sun or the cosmic currents of space, a world of seven billion people would still be desperately dependent on oil to make the nitrate fertilizer to grow the crops those people need to survive. The 21st century, like the 20th century, therefore, will still be Fritz Haber’s world.
Norman borlaug and Fritz Haber. The first was basically the father of modern agriculture helping feed over a billion people. The latter known as the man that saved billions and killed millions, helped develop the haber bosch process that produces ammonia used in fertillizers that are responsible for feeding half the world's population. It was also used in explosives hence the "killed millions" part.
Is that the guy that discovered the gas used in the Holocaust?
Zyklon b was used as a fumigant before it was used in the holocaust. It was also called Prussic acid and would be known as Hydrogen Cyanide today. It was discovered by Carl Scheele back in the 1700s. It is also what gives poisonous (bitter) almonds their characteristic scent and toxicity.
Haber did however, suggest the use of Chlorine gas as a chemical weapon which his wife was so horrified by that she committed suicide. Haber was also partially responsible for the development of the Born Haber cycle which is a theoretical tool used to estimate the thermodynamic stability of salts.
Haber is only listed here because ultimately billions would have starved to death without the Haber process. And regardless of his intentions and the other things he did, that particular invention arguably saved more lives than anyone else that has ever lived.
Louis Pasteur
Politicians and kings rarely do something they weren't forced to, and inventors are rarely without competition, so I take issue with most of the responses here.
Instead, I'll go with naval officer Vasily Arkhipov, who, if he had decided to agree with the normal officers of the submarine he happened to be on, would have started a hot Cold War on 27 October, 1962.
Then again, there was a separate, slightly less severe close call the same day, so if you butterfly that who knows what else happens. It was a crazy time where few understood nuclear diplomacy and cold warfare, but nukes were ubiquitous, and were being treated like normal weapons. We got lucky.
Norman Borlaug. His agricultural innovations have saved literal billions of of lives from starvation and malnutrition.
Norman Borlaug helped develop a lot of techniques used by developing nations to gain food self-sufficency.
Who ever started the whole enlightenment thing, with the idea that there is no god and we are responsible for our self.
Who ever started the whole enlightenment
Highly debatable, but one argument could be made for Sultan Mehmed II, which would be a fairly ironic person to give the award to.
Mathematicians, Physicists, Scientists, and Astronomers: Good effort everyone. The foundation of a rational world.
Very Notable Mentions:
Chemist: Fritz Haber. 1/3 of world food production today can be attributed to his discovery. Also an enormous negative impact, see German Chemical Warfare.
Biologist: Gregor Mendel. Monk who discovered the basis for genetics.
Ecologist: Charles Darwin. Discovered the theory of evolution.
Philosopher: Socrates. Critical Thinking.
Computers: Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, and Alan Turing. See empowerment of computation and relegating ridiculously complex math and data collection to machines.
Computer Networking: J. C. R. Licklider, DARPA, and Tim Berners-Lee. See Internet and I/O on a global scale. Both positive and negative.
Finally, the largest net positive of all: Artists. Yes, artists. Popularity as the prime determinant by nature of their work. For inspiration, desire, meaning, peace, community, and emotion. The language of all, an instinctive form of communication.
My visual pick is Leonardo da Vinci as both a practical and artistic contributor. As for classical, it's nearly impossible to pick, but I'd say Beethoven and then Bach.
Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman
I'll have to argue that Santos Dumont and others inventors did Open Source in the XIX.
-Sir Alexander Fleming (guy who discovered the anti-biotic properties of penicillin)
-Sir Isaac Newton or alternatively, Gottfried Leibniz (they both independently of one another invented Calculus roughly around the same time)
-Bill Watterson
Dolly Parton
James Clerk Maxwell. If it uses electricity then it's based on Maxwell's equations.
my mother
I'm glad you were born, my dear. You are such a blessing!