83. Christiaan Huygens (United Provinces). Versatile scientist who advanced astronomy and mathematical physics, invented the balance spring clock, and argued for the wave model of light, though he didn’t get it exactly right.

84. Orville and Wilbur Wright (USA). Great do-it-yourselfers who designed all aspects of the planes they flew, they deserve the credit they have gotten for manned flight. Coincidentally, the year of the brothers' successful test (1903) also saw invention of a practical gas turbine by Jens William Aegidius Elling (Norway), which led to later development of the jet engine. An important earlier milestone was the invention of the glider by British inventor George Cayley (Great Britain), who worked out principles of aircraft design.

87. Giotto di Bondone and Tomasso Cassai (Masaccio) (Florence). The content and presentation of Giotto's works were influential, but the greatest breakthough came a century later with Masaccio's introduction of linear perspective, use of light, and other methods. In his tragically short life, Masaccio revolutionized painting and sparked the Renaissance.

88. Blaise Pascal (France). A disappointingly short scientific career still left time for investigations of air pressure and mechanics, invention of a calculator, and (with Fermat) the beginning of probability theory. The rest of Pascal's short life was wasted writing misguided religious apologetics.

89. Gaius Julius Caesar (Roman Republic) was a brutal but unparalleled conqueror -- the Roman Empire gained its general outlines during his campaigns. He was murdered before he could complete the work of statecraft that Augustus Caesar accomplished, but still, Caesar established customs of Roman imperial government. His family name was synonymous with ruler (Caesar=Kaiser=tsar) in parts of the West until the 20th century.

90. Heinrich Hertz (Hamburg) discovered radio waves, verifying Maxwell's work and inspiring development of radio by Nikola Tesla and Guglielmo Marconi (Italy). Marconi was the first to demonstrate the transmission of information by electromagnetic waves, using the detector of Edouard Branly (France). His tuner was partly the work of Karl Ferdinand Braun (Hesse-Kassel), who also improved the cathode-ray tube.

91. Philip II and Alexander III (Macedon). Their conquests marked the decline of the strength of the Greek states, but also spread Greek/Mediterranean culture into the Middle East and Egypt with their empire, which Rome would inherit. Unfortunately, Middle Eastern influence on the West would ultimately be more lasting than Greek influence on the Near East, as Middle Eastern religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) would eventually capture the West, displacing earlier Greek and Roman beliefs and customs.

93. Edmund Burke (Ireland, Great Britain). Still one of the most brilliant political thinkers in history; as incisive as Machiavelli, but a defender of virtue rather than cynicism.

94. Alexander G. Bell (Scotland, UK). Not the only person who could have invented the telephone (he beat Elisha Gray to the patent by only a few hours), but the one who did. His invention was a dramatic improvement on the telegraph developed a few decades earlier by Baron Pavel Schilling (Estonia, Russian Empire)(Ampère and others pioneered the concept) and improved by Charles Wheatstone, Samuel Morse and others. The telegraph and telephone are perhaps the most important milestones in the rapid advance of electrical devices.

95. Modern surgery advanced rapidly in the late 19th century, pioneered by doctors such as Ludwig Rehn (Germany), one of the first to perform heart surgery, Theodor Billroth (Prussia), and especially Alexis Carrel (France) who successfully sutured blood vessels and demonstrated preservation of organs for transplant. Important 20th-century advances in surgical techniques are almost too numerous to mention. Cardiopulmonary surgery was made possible by John Heysham Gibbon's heart-lung machine, development of angioplasty, and other breakthroughs. Willem Kolff (Netherlands) developed dialysis and other artificial organs. Host rejection was first illuminated by the discovery of blood groups by the great pathologist Karl Landsteiner (Austria-Hungary) and Jan Jansky, and combated by introduction of immunosuppressant drugs (cyclosporin and others). His discovery, along with introduction of anticoagulants by Albert Hustin, made blood tranfusions (pioneered a century earlier by James Blundell) safe and practical.

96. Robert Boyle (Ireland, England). Important for discovering the law that bears his name, putting chemistry on a firmer footing, and for helping to establish the English scientific community.

97. Wood and coal-burning stoves were gradually developed and improved in the first century of the Industrial Revolution, but heating was transformed in the mid-19th century following improvement of the gas burner by Robert Bunsen (Hanover), which led to the gas furnace. The subsequent introduction of electric heating was a further advance which benefited from Joule's study of heat, development of power transmission networks (and improved transformers), and Albert Marsh's invention of nickel-chromium alloy for heating elements.

98. William Hamilton (Ireland, UK). Great mathematician who anticipated the mathematical basis of quantum mechanics; his quaternions were the first step toward abstract algebra, crucial for 20th-century physics. Linear algebra was invented contemporaneously by Hermann Grassmann (Prussia), though his work was not widely appreciated during his lifetime.

99. Aeschylus (Athens). The first great dramatist whose works come down to us. Greek tragedy, which reached its peak with the works of Sophocles and Euripides (Attica), set the standard for subsequent drama (and Western literature in general). Their contemporary, Aristophanes (Athens?), was the best comedic or satirical Athenian playwright; his works are amazingly modern.

100. Wang Wei (T’ang Empire). Not only one of the greatest Chinese poets, but also one of the first masters of landscape painting. He could qualify for the list on either count, but ranks high for both.

101. Henri Poincaré (France). One of the most brilliant mathematicians, his works opened the door to relativistic physics and "chaos."

102. Aristarchus (Samos, Egypt). Perhaps the first scientific thinker to assert two truths that were not obvious: that the universe is vast and the Earth travels around the Sun. He would rank higher if more people had listened to him.

103. Shotoku Taishi (Japan). One of the leaders who brought Chinese cultural institutions to Japan; Shotoku may have reorganized the government, promoted Confucianism and Buddhism, and built temples which are still extant.

104. 'Umar I (‘Umar ibn al-Khattāb) (Hejaz). Warlord and caliph who took the Middle East, Egypt and Persia for Islam with amazing speed. The Arabs successfully re-organized their empire, and for several centuries preserved earlier philosophy and culture in the lands they conquered. However, the fanaticism of men such as 'Umar who believed that devotion to the Qur'ān was incompatible with other intellectual traditions ('Umar allegedly ordered the destruction of what was left of the famous Alexandrian library of Ptolemy I) would later become popular and widespread in the Islamic world, limiting innovation.

105. Hans Christian Ørsted (Denmark). Chemist who inadvertently demonstrated that an electric current generates a magnetic field, quickly inspiring development of electrodynamic theory by André-Marie Ampère (France), the invention of the electromagnet by William Sturgeon (Great Britain), the discovery of electromagnetic induction by Faraday and Joseph Henry (USA) and creation of the electric generator (also by Faraday). Henry also invented the electric relay, enabling long-distance applications like telegraphy, and contributed to Morse's telegraph.

106. Clovis (Chlodovech) (Tournai) and Clotilda (Chrotechildis) (Burgundian Kingdom). Clovis conquered much of present-day France and established a common law; encouraged by his queen Clotilda, he adopted Catholicism. Their actions started the gradual evolution of the Franks toward their modern identity and position in western Europe.

107. Nicholas Leblanc (France) discovered the first commercially important process for producing sodium carbonate (later superseded), which also encouraged large-scale production of sulfuric acid; the two events were milestones in the growth of the chemical industry. Leblanc's financial success was prevented by the French Revolution, and he later committed suicide.

108. Nicholas-Francois Appert (France). Demonstrated successful method of canning (anticipating Pasteur); food preservation is arguably more important than many modern innovations that get more notice.

109. Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann (Hanover). Mathematician who developed non-Euclidean geometry, used by Einstein in the mathematical formulation of general relativity.

110. The history of plumbing and sanitation has tracked with the highs and lows of civilized society in general. Modern plumbing was accessible in the Roman Empire (at least for the rich) and even earlier, but was gradually forgotten (except at a few high points of intervening history, such as Islamic Spain and China) until the re-invention of the flush toilet in Elizabethan England. Its widespread deployment came even later, long after seemingly less basic technologies were mature; invention of the S-trap by Alexander Cummings (Scotland, Great Britain) was important. Similarly, sewage systems did not greatly surpass the sewers of ancient Rome until the late 1800s with the invention of the septic tank by Jean-Louis Mouras (France), which led to large-scale sewage treatment. Water purification is also amazingly recent, considering its basis on natural principles; sand filtration dates from the 18th century, with the first municipal treatment plant built by Scottish engineer Robert Thom in 1804. Chemical disinfection was demonstrated by John Snow and others, but didn't become standard practice until the 20th century. Clean water is as essential as any technology today, and would go higher on this list if it were obvious who to thank for it.

111. Marcus Aurelius (Roman Empire). One of history’s few real philosopher-kings; his writings are the greatest expression of Stoicism. Unfortunately, one of the last good Roman emperors.

112. George Washington (British Empire). The first U.S. president resisted the temptation to add powers to his office and established a model for subsequent leaders of democratic republics to follow.

113. John Muir (Scotland, UK). The environmental conservation movement has led to great outcomes such as the preservation of natural scenery, investigation of ecology and biodiversity, and the recognition of problems such as ozone depletion. The movement had many founders (including political leaders like George Perkins Marsh and Theodore Roosevelt) but it owes as much to Muir -- a naturalist and loner who didn’t want change in his adopted backyard, the Yosemite Valley -- as any one figure. Muir's innate love of nature echoes the Stoic precept that nature is the source of knowledge (as well as a Romantic mistrust of modernity).

114. John Dalton (Great Britain). Chemist and meteorologist whose concept of the atom, though part wrong (atoms turned out not to be fundamental), inspired the investigation of fundamental reality which culminated in quantum mechanics. Dalton borrowed the idea from the 2,200-year-old works of Greek atomist philosophers Leucippus and Democritus. The atomists' overly reductionist natural philosophy was rightly critiqued by Anaxagoras and Plato but revived in the mechanistic physics of post-Newtonian philosophes, who rejected the Aristotelian world view they associated with Catholicism. Similarly, the atomists' hedonistic ethics (they were perhaps the first to argue that human pleasure should be the measure of good) was refuted by the Stoics but unfortunately resurfaced in modern times. Still, the atom was a lucky guess, though vestiges of atomism probably contribute to popular confusion about quantum mechanics today (the "particles" of so-called particle physics are probably better understood as events -- fluctations or perturbations in fields).

115. Leonardo da Vinci (Florence). One of the greatest painters, but he is more important for his aspiration than his achievements. Though he never finished an important invention, Leonardo is the most intriguing figure of the Renaissance for his desire to (like Aristotle) master many disciplines: art, science and nature.

116. Henry Bessemer (UK). Inventor and businessman whose process made possible large-scale steel production. However, it was improved on by the open-hearth furnace of Charles and Friedrich Siemens (Hanover).

117. Karl Gustaf de Laval (Sweden) and Charles Parsons (UK). Engineers who developed the modern steam turbine, which soon replaced Watt's piston engine for many applications; steam turbines generate most of the world's electricity.

118. Jethro Tull (England). Inventor of a mechanical seed drill, one of several innovations which transformed British/European agriculture (however, less sophisticated seed drills were used in Sumer and China millennia earlier).

119. Alfred Lotka (Ukraine, Austria-Hungary) was the first important theorist of ecology, a still new but promising science; he introduced the relationship between energy flows and ecosystems (inspired by Boltzmann's ideas) and founded population ecology. Other basic concepts of ecology were developed by Charles Elton (UK) and popularized by scientists such as Arthur Tansley (UK) and Eugene Odum (USA).

121. Akiva ben Joseph and Judah haNasi (Judaea, Roman Empire). Great contributors to the Oral Law which has helped the Jewish people preserve their identity. The talmudic tradition blurs the distinction between moral teaching and practical law -- and perhaps there is no need for such a distinction.

122. Raphael Sanzio (Papal States) and Titian Vecellio (Venice). The foremost of the great European masters, with Michelangelo and Leonardo. Portraiture reached its peak with Titian and his contemporaries.

123. Niels Jerne (UK) and Macfarlane Burnet (Australia) advanced the theoretical bases of immunology, perhaps the most complex, and one of the most important, branches of medical science.

124. Pierre-Simon Laplace (France). Mathematician who contributed greatly to celestial mechanics (though he shared the reductionism and materialistic determinism of post-Newtonian scientists).

125. Appius Claudius Caecus (Roman Republic). Engineers in the Mediterranean states made some technical advances, but Roman engineers made more. Part of the reason Rome surpassed previous city-states was underfoot -- the roads, beginning with Claudius’ Appian Way, that enabled the social and economic integration of the Empire. (Likewise, the Persian and Incan Empires were based on road networks, the legacy of anonymous builders.) Claudius also directed construction of the first major Roman aqueduct.

126. Sergey Korolyov (Ukraine, Russian Empire) and Wernher von Braun (Germany) designed the rockets that took us into space and to the Moon. The first liquid-fuel rockets were tested by Robert Goddard (USA), but he did not develop them further.

127. Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach (Baden-Wurttemberg) and Karl Friedrich Benz (Wurttemberg). Daimler and Maybach built the first commercial gasoline engine and Benz the first automobile, one of the most useful and inevitable inventions in history (though a mixed blessing too). The three men also invented many features of modern automobiles. Henry Ford (USA) is perhaps equally important as a pioneer of mass production and perfector of technology (which unfortunately has transformed modern societies in negative ways).

128. Joseph Lagrange (Sardinia). Great mathematician whose work was important in astronomy and mechanics.

129. Daniel Bernoulli (United Provinces). One of the mathematicians who, following Newton, applied mathematics to describe natural processes. Bernoulli developed a kinetic theory of gases, improved by Maxwell and Boltzmann, and investigated fluid mechanics. (Bernoulli also suggested that heat and kinetic energy were equivalent a century before Joule, but unfortunately that sailed over everyone's heads.) The mathematical description of fluid motion developed by Claude-Louis Navier (France) and George Stokes (Ireland, UK) had wide applications in aerodynamics, hydrodynamics and cosmology, including the equations of atmospheric dynamics of Vilhelm Bjerknes (Norway) which are used in weather and climate models.

130. Gregor Mendel (Austria-Hungary). Mendel's experiments (perhaps unintentionally) demonstrated heritability which, after the rediscovery of his work by the next generation of would-be geneticists, led eventually to the investigation of chromosomes. However, the single-gene traits studied by Mendel are atypical of heredity; most traits exhibit more complex variation within a population. The mutation theory developed by Hugo De Vries and others (fueled by the demonstration of inheritance of mutations by Thomas Hunt Morgan and Hermann Müller) was misguided -- random mutations probably play a limited role in evolution, certainly far less important than reproductive selection or adaptive pressure imposed by environmental factors. Nor did the "modern synthesis" introduced by Ronald Fisher much improve our understanding of heredity; development of traits is not directed by protein-coding genes but presumably is guided by instructions in the rest of the genome, still undecoded.

131. Otto Warburg (Germany), Hans Krebs (Germany), Fritz Lipmann (Germany), Frederick Gowland Hopkins (UK), Carl and Gerty Cori (Austria-Hungary), and others described chemical processes of metabolism, an important step in illuminating the complexity of biochemistry.

132. Pythagoras (Samos?). We can't be sure which parts of Pythagoras' mixed legacy (science and mysticism) really begin with him, but the Pythagoreans' interest in number theory and belief in the importance of mathematical relationships led to major discoveries and influenced the development of Greek culture.

133. Vitruvius (Marcus Vitruvius Pollo) (Roman Republic?). Medieval and Renaissance building was modeled on Roman architecture and techniques described in Vitruvius' works. Unfortunately, we don't know the names of most of the great architects and engineers of Rome.

134. Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan and al-Walid I (Umayyad Caliphate). Caliphs who reorganized the Arab empire and oversaw development of agriculture, public works, and mosques and other monuments.

135. Jacob Bernoulli (Switzerland) and his brother Johann founded a famous family dynasty of mathematicians (see Daniel); they were also among the first to investigate differential equations, following Leibniz. The field was expanded by the superhumanly prolific Leonhard Euler (Switzerland), who contributed to many branches of mathematics including calculus and number theory, investigated complex numbers, and developed fundamental tools used in engineering and physics; he worked with Daniel Bernoulli, Lagrange, and others.

136. Joseph Marie Jacquard (France). Developed a mechanical loom which was one of the first successful machines to use punch cards -- a small step in the development of computers.

137. Yang Chien (Wen) (Northern Zhou). Founded Sui dynasty, which was soon followed by one of the greatest periods of Chinese culture, the T'ang dynasty established by Li Yuan (Gao-tsu) and Li Shih-min (T'ai-tsung) (Sui). The short-lived Sui Empire was doomed by a disastrous war with the Goguryeans (Korea) but before it went, it reunified China and resumed the building of the Grand Canal, one of the world’s greatest feats of engineering. Its successor, the T'ang, established Taoism and Confucianism as the state religion and was notable for its economic might and artistic achievements.

139. Alfred Marshall (UK). Marshall's work is the basis of microeconomic theory; while mostly theoretical rather than descriptive, it's the most substantive contribution to economics after Adam Smith.

140. Hammurabi (Babylon). Amorite prince who built the great Babylonian empire, which consolidated the cultural achievements of the Sumerian-Akkadian states that preceded it. The economic and artistic might of Babylon was more unprecedented than Hammurabi's famous legal code, which was anticipated by earlier codes such as that of Ur-Nammu (Akkadian Empire?), who ruled Akkad and Sumer several centuries earlier. Ur-Nammu also united several city-states by conquest and constructed roads and temples which were among the greatest in the ancient world. (The earliest legal code of which we have a record, presumably not the first, was promulgated by Urukagina, ruler of the Sumerian city-state of Lagash in the 24th century BCE.)

141. Candra Gupta I, Samudra Gupta and Candra Gupta II (Gupta Empire). Emperors of northern India; the empire they ruled nurtured architecture, science, and literature and influenced subsequent dynastic states which would carry on the cultural achievements of India's Classical Age.

143. Cosimo and Lorenzo d'Medici (Florence). The Medicis are unique figures in history, combining the ruthlessness of clan-based politics with enlightened patronage of the arts and Neoplatonism. They were responsible for much of the best of the Renaissance (with their proxy in Milan, Francesco Sforza), more so than almost any other figures of the time.

144. Alfred Wallace (UK). Great naturalist and explorer, exceeded only by Darwin. He could have been the first author of the theory of evolution by natural selection (see #1) if he had not had the generosity to yield to Darwin’s superior (and slightly earlier) formulation of the theory. However, Wallace lacked the insight to apply the evolutionary paradigm to humanity, as Darwin did.

145. Chuang-tzu (Song?), if he existed as a single person, was after Lao-tzu the most important Taoist writer and helped to elaborate its philosophy. Contemporary Hsun-tzu (Hsun K'uang) (Ch'i?) is also an great figure in philosophical literature; he made Confucian moral thought more pragmatic and rigorous.

146. Pepin II, Charles Martel, Pepin III (Austrasia, Kingdom of the Franks). Frankish rulers who held off Moslem invasion, protected the papal territory from the Lombards, and unified Francia, leading to Charlemagne's conquests; the boundaries of western Europe still reflect their influence.

147. Robert Koch (Hanover). Great microbiologist who developed the technique of culturing bacteria and was the first to demonstrate the pathogenic cause of important diseases, leading to the search for antibiotics.

148. Thutmose I, Thutmose III, Amenhotep III (Kemet). Our information about them is limited, but these New Kingdom rulers did not think small -- their conquests expanded Egyptian influence in the Middle East, and their architectural legacies are works of lasting beauty.

149. Benedict (Lombard Kingdom) gave structure to the monasticism which grew up after the fall of the Empire. The first Christian ascetics were radical dualists who rejected the world (following the example of St. Anthony); this included Pachomius and other founders of cenobitic monasticism -- a movement which may have undermined civilization (if it had any effect at all). But Benedict's Rule tempered their extreme asceticism and formed the basis for later monastic orders which helped to reunify society and culture in the Middle Ages. In particular, the Cistercian order under the leadership of Bernard (Burgundy, France) grew rapidly and, because monastic life emphasized self-sufficiency, served as an incubator for the rebirth of industrial technology.

150. Joseph von Fraunhofer (Bavaria, Holy Roman Empire). Glassblower turned physicist who constructed the first spectroscope and diffraction grating, crucial to the development of modern physics, astronomy and chemistry. His own observations of the solar spectrum led to the development of spectroscopy by physicists Anders Ångström, Bunsen, and Gustav Kirchhoff (Prussia), who also formalized the laws of electrical conductivity among other contributions. (The uniqueness of chemical spectra was noticed earlier by Charles Wheatstone, the great scientist who was also one of the inventors of telegraphy.) Fraunhofer also improved the heliometer, allowing successful measurement of stellar parallax by Friedrich Bessel (Prussia) and other astronomers.

151. John Fleming (UK) and Lee de Forest (USA). Inventors of the diode and the triode (vacuum tube) used in early radios, stereos, and radar before the invention of the transistor (which was a vast improvement, however).

152. William Smith (Great Britain) studied and mapped rock strata and the fossil sequence; one of the founders (with Georges Cuvier) of stratigraphy.

153. Otto I (Saxony, Eastern Frankish Kingdom). The most important medieval German king, Otto consolidated the empire, repulsed the Magyars, and fostered stability in central Europe.

154. Abd ar-Rahman I (Umayyad Caliphate). Founded Córdoba, a culturally rich Muslim state that was later a conduit for the spread of information from the Middle East to Europe.

157. John von Neumann (Neumann Janos) (Austria-Hungary). A notable scientist with a morally mixed legacy (like many of his contemporaries, he played a role in nuclear weapons development), the brilliant mathematician von Neumann contributed to quantum mechanics, information theory and other aspects of applied science. He is perhaps most important for developing game theory and basic concepts of computer programming, based on theoretical work of Alan Turing (UK). Turing's ideas also spurred Claude Shannon (USA) in developing information theory, which has found broad application across the sciences and engineering.

158. Ilya Prigogine (Russian Empire). Time will be needed to assess the importance of his ideas, but physicist Prigogine applied bold new ideas from thermodynamics and quantum mechanics to modern cosmology, including the amplification of spacetime by matter creation from the quantum field (the first scientific theory of creation).

160. The discovery by Theodor Boveri (Bavaria) and others that chromosomes are the location of genetic information, experimentally confirmed by Thomas Hunt Morgan and his team, led eventually to elaboration of their molecular structure and (later) the elucidation of protein coding and assembly by Francis Crick (UK), Marshall Nirenberg (USA) and others (based on a suggestion by astrophysicist George Gamow, better known for the big bang theory). Unfortunately, we still haven't deciphered how the genome directs development and regulates gene expression, and we have little understanding of the genetic basis of complex traits. Most of our limited knowledge about the heritability of human traits comes from empirical research such as the twin studies pioneered by Francis Galton (UK). However, use of DNA as a "molecular clock" pioneered by Allan Wilson has illuminated the chronology of human prehistory (but also fueled unscientific conclusions about the unimportance of genetic difference between species and human ethnic groups).

161. Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu (Ashikaga Shogunate). Warlords who unified Japan and established its modern capital, Tokyo, and post-feudal political system.

162. Wilhelm Röntgen (Prussia) discovered X-rays (inaugurating an era of discoveries in physics that included Becquerel's identification of radioactivity soon after) and demonstrated their medical application. X-rays became one of the most important tools for diagnostic medicine, leading to further development of technologies such as ultrasound and CT scanning.

164. John Bardeen (USA), Walter Brattain (China) and William Shockley (UK). Inventors of the transistor, paving the way for Jack Kilby's development of the integrated circuit (computer chip). Bardeen also was part of the team that explained superconductivity.

165. Sargon (Sharrum-kin) (Kish?). Many building blocks of later civilization developed in the Sumerian states, but we have no names to go with them. Instead, the first well-known historical figure is empire-builder Sargon, who conquered Mesopotamia (probably with some destructive loss to Sumerian culture as a result). His empire didn't last, but laid the groundwork for Akkadian cultural influence in the centuries to come. Sargon's name was still one to conjure with sixteen centuries later, borrowed by Assyrian kings who, like their predecessor, ruled from modern-day Iran to the Mediterranean.

166. William Blackstone (Great Britain). British law is (or should be) a model for the world. It evolved organically and gradually (beginning with social conventions, not abstract truths as Blackstone thought) but men such as Blackstone deserve credit for assembling legal scholarship and criticism.

167. Evangelista Torricelli (Papal States). Mathematician; demonstrated the existence of air pressure and invented the barometer. This led directly to development of the vacuum pump by Otto von Guericke (Magdeburg) which inspired Boyle's investigations of gases, leading in turn to Papin's experiments with steam. Much later, Heinrich Geissler (Saxe-Meiningen) improved Guericke's pump and developed the vacuum tube which, improved by William Crookes, made possible the discovery of X-rays and the electron and led to development of modern cathode-ray tubes.

169. Jöns Jacob Berzelius (Sweden) successfully interpreted the new discoveries of early 19th-century chemistry. His exposition of atomic weights supported Dalton's atomic theory and led to the periodic table; though Berzelius lived before knowledge of atomic structure, he guessed at the electrical nature of chemical bonds (elaborated by later theorists such as Edward Frankland, Kekulé and Gilbert Lewis). Berzelius also introduced modern chemical notation.

170. Thales and Anaximander (Miletus). Possibly the first important natural philosophers of the Mediterranean world. It's impossible to know what, if anything, should be credited to Thales (like Pythagoras and others), but several formative ideas, including the scientific observation of nature, mathematical proofs and the dictum "Know thyself" are supposedly his inventions. We know more about Anaximander, whose cosmological speculations were surprisingly advanced.

171. The use of magnifying lenses was known to the Egyptians and Greeks, long before development of the telescope and microscope which was a seminal event for modern science. Nicholas of Kues (Holy Roman Empire), a German cardinal, scientist and early humanist, is credited with being the first to use corrective lenses for myopia, but the use of spectacles for farsightedness (convex lenses) dates to the 11th century (probably China) and is described in the Book of Optics by the Arabic scientist Alhazen (Abū 'Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham) (Amirate of Baghdad).

172. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison (British Empire). These brilliant men were in the right place at the right time to ensure that the best political institutions of England were copied in the United States. Though it focused only on the structure of government (which is almost incidental to the organization and character of a society) rather than laws or their moral basis, Hamilton and Madison's constitution created an effective federal system which pulled the American colonies back from anarchy. The efficacy of written constitutions is greatly exaggerated, though -- the best-governed country in the world, Britain, continues to do without one. And the limits on federal power proscribed by America's constitution have been largely nullified by judicial interpretation of subsequent amendments.

173. Sappho (Lesbos?) and other 6th-century lyric poets such as Archilochus (Paros?), Alcman, and Pindar (Boeotia) are among the greatest known writers of antiquity -- even though their works survive only in fragments.

174. Chao K'uang-yin (T’ai-Tsu) (Later T'ang?). Established the Sung (Song) dynasty which reunified and modernized China.

175. Charles I (Charlemagne) (Austrasia?) was perhaps the first ruler to try to reassemble a European empire not centered on Constantinople, though his vision was far ahead of its time. His territorial and cultural gains were squandered by his descendants and followed by centuries of political disunity and feudalism. However, his rule strengthened European identity, protected the papacy, stimulated the rebuilding of Europe and spread of literacy, and unified social institutions among the Franks, Saxons and other former "barbarians."

176. Edward Lorenz (USA). Meteorologist whose modeling of weather patterns made inescapable the conclusion that some natural phenomena are nonlinear and unpredictable (though not really "chaotic").

177. Herman Hollerith (USA). One of many whose innovations anticipated the modern computer. Hollerith's computing machine was less of a conceptual leap than the "difference engine" of Charles Babbage, but was a practical device that was actually put in use. It was a forerunner of later mechanical computers, which preceded the development of electronic computers in the 1940s by a number of inventors -- Konrad Zuse, John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry, Howard Aiken, and John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert.

178. Alfred Wegener (German Empire). Meteorologist whose continental drift hypothesis (unfortunately not widely accepted during his lifetime) anticipated the theory of plate tectonics.

179. Joseph Black (France). Chemist who was the first to isolate a constituent part of air (carbon dioxide), leading to the experiments of Cavendish and Lavoisier and the development of modern chemistry. His theory of latent heat led to Watt's improvement of the steam engine. (Black was also a great networker -- his friends included Watt, James Hutton and Adam Smith.)

180. T'ao Chi'en (T'ao Yuan-ming) (Chu). Not the inventor of Chinese "landscape poetry," but one of the first great practitioners, along with his contemporary Hsieh Ling-yun (Ch'in?).

181. Marcus Tullius Cicero (Roman Republic). Politician, orator, and Stoic aphorist, so brilliant that his name is still remembered 2,000 years later. Cicero and other Greek and Roman authors (Plutarch, Livy, Tacitus) are important for their reflection of Aristotelian and Stoic virtue ethics. Other great Roman literary figures include the satirical poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace), Pliny the Elder, Seneca and others.

182. Xenophanes (Lydia) and Parmenides (Elis). Xenophanes is among the earliest known rationalist and monotheistic philosophers. His successor Parmenides is one of the most influential Greek thinkers; his analysis of the duality of sense knowledge and natural laws or constants influenced Plato and all later thought.

183. Nātaputta Vardhamāna (Mahavira) (Vrjji) was the major figure in the founding of Jainism, a strongly dualistic, ascetic religion which borrowed much from Buddhism as well as Hinduism (but with an even more fantastic cosmology). Though relatively few in number, Jains have been an influential force in Indian history for millennia and have included important rulers.

184. Chersiphron (Knossos?). According to sources, the architect of some important early Greek temples (along with Rhoecus, Theodoros (Samos), and others who are variously described as inventors, engineers, sculptors and architects).

185. Timur-i-leng (Tamurlane) (Transoxiana). Ruthless and bloody conqueror who founded an empire that spread Persian and Islamic culture through central Asia, producing great architecture and art. The empire began splintering under Timur's grandson, Ulugh Beg (a good astronomer, but bad ruler). However, a century later his descendants Babur (Zahir ud-Din Mohammed) (Ferghana) and Akbar (Sind) created the Mughal empire in north India. A great ruler, Akbar ambitiously tried to incorporate Islamic and European influences into Indian culture.

186. Friedrich August Kekulé (Hesse, Holy Roman Empire), with Archibald Couper and others, advanced the first theories of chemical structure; we now know that molecular geometry can be as important as chemical composition in determining the emergent properties of compounds. This insight was applied by the biochemist Emil Fischer to enzyme function. Knowledge of molecular structure grew explosively with development of new techniques such as X-ray diffraction; in the 20th century, Linus Pauling and others applied quantum mechanics to create the modern understanding of chemical bonds.

187. Cyril (Constantine) and Methodius (Eastern Roman Empire). Missionaries who introduced Christian worship to Slavs and created the Cyrillic alphabet, influencing the development of the Eastern Church and leading to its central role in Slavic countries.

188. Alexander Parkes (UK), John Wesley Hyatt (USA) and Leo Baekeland (Belgium). Chemists who produced the first plastics and launched the development of the plastics industry -- one of the great revolutions in materials science. The availability of fossil fuels has made plastics almost too ubiquitous.

189. Nicola Pisano (Apulia and Sicily). Great sculptor who reintroduced classical influences, a harbinger of the Renaissance. His successor, architect and sculptor Arnolfo di Cambio (Florence?), built notable Florentine buildings and was among the most important architects of the late Gothic and early Renaissance.

190. Philo of Alexandria and Plotinus (Egypt, Roman Empire). Under-remembered philosophers whose ideas anticipated the Christian synthesis of Greek philosophy and Middle Eastern (Judeo-Christian) religion -- a step backward for philosophy in most ways, but historically all-important. Philo, both a practicing Jew and Neoplatonist, was among the first to combine naturalistic Greek thought with mystical (late) Judaism. Plotinus and the other Neoplatonists were "pagans" but added Jewish metaphysical concepts; soon after, men such as Irenaeus, Origenus Adamantius (Origen), and Clement of Alexandria fashioned Platonism and Gnostic elements into Christian doctrine.

191. Dante Alighieri (Florence) and Giovanni Boccaccio (France). Dante’s works were a sign of European cultural resurgence, combining elements of the medieval outlook and the Renaissance. Boccaccio anticipated modern literary forms and, with Petrarch and others, rediscovered and translated important classical texts.

193. Scott Joplin, W. C. Handy and Gertrude "Ma" Rainey (USA). The inventors of blues music are unknown, but composers and performers like Handy and Rainey promoted it. Their popularity touched off the amazing century-long evolution of American music from blues and ragtime -- of which Joplin was the greatest composer -- to jazz, gospel and rock, influencing the parallel growth of music in Latin America (son, tango, samba, merengue) along the way.

194. Louis Leakey (British Empire) and Mary Leakey (UK). Our knowledge of human evolution would be minimal without the archaeological explorations of the Leakeys -- and before them, those of Eugene Dubois (Netherlands), Raymond Dart, and Donald Johansen -- which traced the evolution of humanity.

195. Max von Laue (German Empire) and William Lawrence Bragg (Australia). Physicists who developed X-ray crystallography, a revolutionary development in biology, chemistry and material science, enabling the discovery of the structure of DNA, insulin, penicillin, and countless other minerals and compounds.

196. Willem Einthoven (Dutch Empire). Physiologist who invented the electrocardiograph machine -- one of several important tools in internal medicine introduced in the early 20th century.

197. Hendrik Lorentz (Netherlands). Physicist, invented the transformation equations and (with George FitzGerald) some of the basic concepts used in Einstein's theory of special relativity.

198. Plutarch (Achaea, Roman Empire) and Diogenes Laertius (Roman Empire). The first great biographers that are familiar today, and with other historians such as Thucydides, sources of information about Greek and Roman culture.

199. Agnello Participazio (Venice). Doge of Venice who asserted its independence and led the city's construction; Venice became (with Genoa and Pisa) one of the economic leaders and cultural centers of late medieval Europe.

200. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Spain). Author of one of the first great novels in history, which contributed many phrases to European speech. The origins of the novel are debatable. The form was anticipated by European romances and the works of Murasaki Shikibu (Japan), one of the founders of Japanese literature; but the modern novel is traceable to 18th-century English popular writers such as the great satirist Jonathan Swift (Ireland, England).

201. Clocks of various types (water clocks, sundials) were used in many early civilizations and water clocks coupled with complex gears were developed by the Greeks and others, but the first true mechanical clocks were designed by medieval European inventors such as Jacopo and Giovanni de'Dondi (Padua). Many subsequent improvements followed, but as late as 1700 clocks still lacked the needed accuracy and stability for shipboard use (necessary to determine longitude and ensure safe navigation); John Harrison (England) invented an improved marine timekeeper which solved this problem.

202. Jan Ingenhousz (Netherlands) demonstrated photosynthesis, repeating an experiment by Joseph Priestley. The work of Jean Senebier and the great natural scientist Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure (Geneva) further illuminated phytochemistry, but the chemical reaction was not completely elucidated until well into the 20th century by Cornelius van Niel (Netherlands).

203. Isabel I (Isabella) (Castile) and Fernando V (Ferdinand) (Aragon) unified Spain, one of the first European nations but subsequently one of the least successful in transitioning from a mercantilist to a capitalist economy. Their sponsorship of Columbus was farsighted, but their other legacies less fortunate -- Spain restricted the freedom of its citizens, squandered the wealth captured from Latin America, and fostered anti-Semitism.

204. Ernst Ruska (Germany) and others developed the electron microscope, leading to discoveries in cellular structure and biochemistry and the modern revolution in cell science.

205. Theodor Schwann (Prussia) investigated digestion, demonstrated meat spoilage, discovered yeast, and (with others) described cells and tissues, early discoveries in the development of physiology and biochemistry. Schwann and Matthias Schleiden asserted that all living organisms are made of cells (which Robert Remak and Rudolf Virchow extended to the assertion that all cells come from other cells), an important truth that remains basic to biology.

206. Enrico Fermi (Italy) conducted the first nuclear fission reactions, which were correctly interpreted by physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch (Austria-Hungary). Fermi, Frisch and Leó Szilárd (Austria-Hungary), inventor of the nuclear chain reaction, were instrumental in urging Britain and the United States to develop atomic weapons ahead of Germany. Ironically, all four scientists were émigres from Axis nations.

207. Justinian I (Taurisium, Eastern Roman Empire). Byzantine emperor notable for directing the monumental building of the empire, including Hagia Sophia, the work of Isidorus of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles (Anatolia, Eastern Roman Empire). Unfortunately, Justinian also closed the Platonic Academy in Athens, forced the last pagan philosophers to convert to Christianity, and promoted intolerance of Jews and other non-Christians. And his wars of conquest were destructive and accomplished little -- they ruined parts of Italy and were followed in the West by the Dark Ages and the collapse of European culture, though the Eastern Empire continued.

208. Khamose and Ahmose I (Egypt). Pharoahs who overthrew rule of the Hyksos and inaugurated the New Kingdom.

209. Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce (Great Britain) probably did more than any others to abolish the institution of slavery from the civilized world -- a triumph of incremental reform without spilling blood.

210. Praxiteles (Athens) and Lysippus (Sicyon) are the best-known sculptors of the later Greek style and influenced European sculpture in the Renaissance.

211. Ciao Wei-yo (Chou?). Believed to be the engineer who designed China's first canals with locks. His work was described by Shen Kuo (Song), a polymathic writer and natural scientist who described the magnetic compass and investigated astronomy, geology and engineering.

212. Mahendravarman I (Pallava Empire). Ruler; during his reign the rock temples at Kanchi and Mamallapuram were begun which influenced classical Indian architecture. As usual, the names of the architects are forgotten. Similarly, the kings of Mataram who ordered the building of great monuments such as Prambanan are remembered, but not the men who built it. And the great city of Angkor Wat ensured immortality for the ruler who commissioned it, Suryavarman II (Khmer Empire), but not the builders.

213. Henry III (Heinrich der Löwe) (Saxony and Bavaria). German ruler who was ultimately sidelined by the intrigues of his cousin Frederick I, but whose gift to posterity is less ambiguous than Barbarossa's -- Henry founded the first of the Hanseatic towns which fostered modern trade and government in Northern Europe.

214. Eratosthenes (Cyrenaica). Geographer and mathematician who accurately determined the circumference of the Earth in the 3rd century BC.

216. Thomas Young (Great Britain). A physicist and polymath, Young described light interference and noted light's wave-like properties (leading to the development of the interferometer by Albert Michelson and others), investigated the nature of energy (and coined the term), and also helped decipher the Rosetta Stone.

217. Nicole Oresme (France). Bishop and counselor whose speculations on physics and mathematics anticipated and influenced later advances, including heliocentrism and Galilean mechanics.

218. Like heating, the invention of refrigeration was an incremental process; vapor-compression refrigeration was suggested by American inventor Oliver Evans and demonstrated by Jacob Perkins years before commercial refrigeration was introduced by James Harrison (Scotland, UK) and others. Air conditioning followed a few decades later, after electric power was readily available.

219. Murray Gell-Mann (USA). Physicist whose ideas (and annoying nomenclature) built our understanding of subatomic particles.

220. Charles Goodyear (USA). Inventor who discovered vulcanization of rubber, an underpinning advance in the modern economic world.

221. Jan van Eyck (Liège?, Holy Roman Empire). One of the first masters of oil painting and and influence on the Renaissance, van Eyck was the first great figure of Flemish and Dutch painting, a tradition which would later produce great portraitists such as Hals, landscape painters including the Ruisdaels, and the unique geniuses Rembrandt van Rijn and Jan Vermeer (United Provinces). Rembrandt’s and Vermeer's portraits are among the most fully realized in Western art.

222. William Nicholson (Great Britain) and a collaborator were among the discoverers of electrolysis, an all-important technology in the development of chemistry and chemical processing. It was used by the great chemist and inventor Humphry Davy (Great Britain) to isolate many chemical elements. (Davy is one of the most important figures of chemistry, though his greatest discovery may have been his assistant Michael Faraday.) Many important industrial processes involve electrolysis, notably the Hall-Héroult process of aluminum production, developed independently by inventor Paul Louis Héroult (France) and Charles Martin Hall (USA).

223. Kurt Gödel (Austria-Hungary). Mathematician who demonstrated that all mathematical systems contain propositions which cannot be proved within the system; his discovery implies limits on our ability to gain knowledge about the universe.

224. Pachacutec (Cuzco). Ruler during the vast expansion of the great Inca empire, one of the largest in history. Unfortunately, his empire was short-lived, ended by Pizarro and Spain.

225. Thomas Malthus (Great Britain). Malthus may have been wrong about particulars, but the general premise of his theory -- that human populations are limited by resource scarcity -- was spot on, and his insight inspired Darwin and Wallace in developing the theory of natural selection.

226. Hakīm Abu l-Qāsim Firdawsī Tūsī (Khorasan, Samanid Empire). Beginning with Firdawsi, the Persian poets of the medieval era are among the finest in history -- Abdallah Ja’far ibn Muhammad Rudaki (Khorasan), Omar Khayyām (Khorasan, Seljukid Empire) who was also an important mathematician, Hāfez (Khwāja Sams ud-Dīn Muhammad Hāfez-e Sīrāzī) (Ilkhanate), and Rumi (Mawlānā Jalāl ad-dīn Muhammad Rūmī) (Khorasan, Khwarezmian Empire?) are only the best known. Their work is mystical, sometimes overly so, but intellectual as well.

227. Apollonius (Pamphylia, Ptolemaic Kingdom). Greek mathematician who named and defined conic sections. Unfortunately, he followed Hipparchus in developing an astronomical model based on epicycles, influencing Ptolemy.

228. Peter I (Pyotr Romanov) (Russia). One of the most influential rulers in recorded history, but his legacies are somewhat ambiguous. He oversaw one of the greatest imperial (and cultural) expansions in modern times, and modernized some (though not most) Russian institutions. However, Peter's brutal conquests and autocratic rule were consistent with earlier and later Russian rulers, and his public works were built at great cost in human life. Peter encouraged Westernization of Russia's elites (eventually enabling the rise of an intellectual class which would overthrow the social order). But he resisted taking steps to foster mercantile activity or acculturate the serfs, exacerbating a cultural division which would prove toxic.

229. Cyrus McCormick (USA) introduced the mechanical reaper, which replaced intensive hand labor and led to development of the combine harvester and other agricultural machines.

230. Aesop (if he existed). The first great writer of children’s literature known today; only the Bible and Shakespeare have contributed more famous phrases and idioms to modern English. The only problem is, we don't know that "Aesop" really existed.

231. Guido d'Arezzo (Tuscany, Holy Roman Empire). The roots of Western music theory go back at least to Pythagoras, but the recent evolution of Western music began in the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, including the development of modern musical notation by Guido, a Benedictine monk.

232. Hans Bethe (Germany). Physicist who contributed to development of nuclear weapons and quantum electrodynamics; Bethe was the first to confirm the nature of stellar fusion, an idea suggested by Arthur Eddington (best known for experimental confirmation of relativity theory).

233. Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel (Hanover, Holy Roman Empire). A pure discoverer, but few natural scientists wrote their name in more places than Herschel -- he studied stellar motion and discovered infrared radiation, binary stars, and the first planet not known in antiquity (Uranus).

234. Hesiod (Boeotia?). Epic poet, one of the great figures of early Greek literature.

235. Hippocrates (Cos, Delian League) is remembered as the founder of the discipline of medicine. He may have introduced some techniques and a naturalistic approach, along with many incorrect ideas which were not corrected until the late Middle Ages or the recent era, two millennia later. Similarly, Theophrastus (Lesbos, Athenian Empire), a philosopher who followed Aristotle, developed some fundamental concepts of natural science, but not much was done with them for 1500 years.

236. Fyodor Dostoevski (Russian Empire). The novel is a potentially powerful literary form and its greatest masters -- Murasaki, Honoré de Balzac, Leo Tolstoy, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) -- created impressive fictional worlds, but the quality of their ideas did not always match their style. Dostoevski is an exception; his treatment of utopianism and the crisis of religious belief was influential in engendering skepticism of modern ideology (though his implied solution, embrace of Russian Orthodox Christianity, was perhaps not broadly useful).

237. Benjamin Franklin (USA). A multifaceted talent who made his mark as a diplomat, writer and inventor; his Franklin stove was a step in the development of indoor heating, but Franklin's investigation of electricity was perhaps his greatest contribution.

238. Alexis de Tocqueville (France). Influential historian and social analyst whose Democracy in America was an influential (and substantially correct) treatment of government and social institutions.

239. Julius II (Giuliano della Rovere) (Genoa). Pope who (when he wasn't engaged in war, diplomacy and politics) continued the restoration of Rome begun by Martin V and Sixtus IV, compiled classical art and commissioned the greatest works of Michelangelo and Raphael.

240. Girolamo Cardano (Naples). Professional gambler and amateur mathematician who compiled and improved 16th-century algebra and was among the first to inquire into probability.

241. Lambert Adolphe Quetelet (Belgium). Mathematician who applied normal (Gaussian) distribution curves to social statistics and anthropometric data and, with Galton, contributed to our statistical understanding of human and biological phenomena, unfortunately also inspiring the growth of social science.

242. Rāmānuja (Chola Empire?) is one of the last important definers of Indian philosophy; his system incorporated religious practice and a realist view of the physical world, refuting the Advaita Vedānta of Śankara, and described the relationship between the self or soul and the cosmic principle (God or Brahman).

243. Osman I. His father Ertugrul was a transplant from central Asia who brought a small force west to escape the Mongols and plunder the weak Byzantine state; from that unlikely beginning, Osman and his people built the expansive and long-lasting Ottoman Empire. Their conquests, completed by Osman's descendant Mehmed II, removed Asia Minor from Christian Europe, a decisive break from the past. Unfortunately, Ottoman culture famously declined long before the end of the empire's long run, inspired the fanatical Wahhabi revolt and on its way out, perpetrated the Armenian genocide. Turkey has modernized but could still be a beachhead for militant Islam in the future.

244. Odo of Metz (Francia Occidental). Architect who designed the Palatine Chapel, one of the notable Romanesque buildings of the Carolingian Empire; though unambitious compared to later cathedrals, it showed renewed interest in classical culture.

245. Fritz Haber (Prussia). Great chemist whose discoveries were not always good. Haber developed the industrial process for synthesizing ammonia, one of the most important of many world-transforming developments of modern chemistry. Coupled with Wilhelm Ostwald's process for converting ammonia to nitric acid, the Haber process made Germany independent of natural sources of saltpeter for explosives and enabled its wars. Haber then developed Germany's chemical weapons program, adding to the horror of World War I with ever more diabolical poisons. Haber's and Ostwald's greatest legacy is the mass industrial production of nitrogen fertilizers, which contributed to the modern global population explosion ... not an unmixed blessing either, as many millions of people are now dependent on the greater agricultural yields made possible by industrial technology.

246. Pappus of Alexandria (Egypt, Roman Empire?). The last great mathematician of antiquity, he made contributions to geometry.

247. Odo and Odilo of Cluny (West Francia). Abbots of Cluny, the most influential Christian monastery during the 10^th and 11^th centuries. Odilo's successor, Abbot Hugh (France), ordered the construction of the great church at Cluny (designed by Gunzo), a perversely tangible and worldly achievement for an ascetic order. Several Cluniac monks became popes -- including the demagogic reformer Gregory VII and Urban II, who launched the Crusades, worked to re-Christianize southern Italy, and unfortunately continued the clerical reforms of Gregory. As often with the history of Christianity, the influence of Cluny is good and evil mixed: it provided leadership, but was also an incubator for paroxysms of reform spurred by the false value of social equality.

248. Group theory began in multiple branches of mathematics, anticipated by advances of Euler, Gauss, Lagrange, and others before its explicit development by Niels Abel (Norway) and Évariste Galois (France) and further definition by Arthur Cayley. Like other esoteric branches of mathematics, group theory had little practical application at first, but became a powerful conceptual component of quantum mechanics.

249. Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Naples) and Francesco Borromini (Lombardy). The greatest Baroque architects (with Maderno and Guarini); both worked on St. Peter's.

250. Winston Churchill (UK). In spite of his failures, the latest (hopefully not the last) great Western political leader; he led Britain in the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Honorable Mention (some great individuals not mentioned in the list above): Gudea, Mentuhotep I, Mentuhotep II, Cheng Tang, Hattušili I (Labarna), Amenhotep IV (Akhnaten), Thutmose, Ashurbanipal, Nebuchadrezzar II, Cyrus II and Darius I, Eupalinus, Exekias, Themistocles, Valmiki (if he existed), Anaxagoras, Erasistratus, Ctesibius, Titus Maccius Plautus, Publius Cornelius Scipio, Judas Maccabeus, Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid), Tu Chi, Kujula Kadphises, Hero of Alexandria, Pedanius Dioscorides, Wang Ch'ung, Rabirius, Trajan (M. Ulpius Traianus), Kaniśka I, Liu Hui, Ambrose, Theodosius I (Flavius Theodosius), Kālidāsa, Patricius (Patrick), Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, ThiruValluvar, Imru' al-Qays, Harshavardhana, Tu Fu, Abu Musa Jābir ibn Hayyān, Robert IV (Rutpert), Isma'il ibn Ahmad, Rollo (Robert), Abū Kāmil Shujā ibn Aslam ibn Muhammad, Chinese painters (Ching Hao, Tung Yuan, Li Ch'eng, Fan Kuan), Abū al-Qāsim al-Zahrawī, Chou Tun-i, Su Song, Abū al-'Iz Ibn Ismā'il ibn al-Razīz al-Jazarī, Abu 'Ali al-Hasan al-Tusi Nizām al-Mulk, Anawrahta, Suger, Alexander Neckam, Innocent III (Lotario de' Conti di Segni), Robert Grosseteste, Henry de Bracton, Rudolf I, Amīr Khusrow Dehlawī, Philippe de Vitry, Francesco Petrarca, Chu Yuan-chang (Hongwu), Leon Alberti, Paul III (Alessandro Farnese), Nanak, Peter Henlein, Ignacio de Loyola (Ignatius), Ambroise Paré, Giovanni da Palestrina, Tulsidas, Elizabeth I, William Gilbert, Juan de Austria, Simon Stevin, John Napier, Anselmus de Boodt, Abbās I, Jan III Sobieski, Niels Stensen (Nicolas Steno), Jean Racine, Matsuo Bashō, Bartolomeo Cristofori, Stephen Hales, Alexander Pope, John Smeaton, James Cook, Henry Cavendish, Jesse Ramsden, Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, Henry Cort, William Jones, Johann Ritter, Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, James Neilson, Christian Schönbein, Edwin Chadwick, Friedrich Wöhler, John Henry Newman, Frédéric Chopin, John Lawes, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, Hippolyte Fizeau, Florence Nightingale, William Perkin, Auguste de Meritens, Patrick Manson and Ronald Ross, Anton Chekhov, Leon Charles Albert Calmette, José Ortega y Gasset, Ernest Lawrence, and many others.