After re-finishing this book in February of 2023, I wrote,

 

"I first read this 557-page, supersized, ink-and-paper book many decades ago. I remember discussing it with my mother. Recently I bought it on Kindle and re-read it. I was surprised by how much of it I remembered. Give a guess about each of the following: Who do you think the author ranks as the #1? Who is Ts'as Lun and why would he be #7? And how could Adoph Hitler be all the way down at #39?

 

My clippings below collapse a 557-page book into 12 pages, measured by using 12-point type in Microsoft Word.

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See all my book recommendations.  

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Here are the selections I made:

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1 MUHAMMAD 570-632

 

2 ISAAC NEWTON 1642-1727

 

These discoveries, together with the results of many other optical experiments which he had performed, were presented by Newton before the British Royal Society when he was twenty-nine years old.

 

His major mathematical contribution was his invention of integral calculus, which he probably devised when he was twenty-three or twenty-four years old.

 

Had Newton done nothing else, the invention of integral calculus by itself would have entitled him to a fairly high place on this list.

 

This set of four laws, taken conjointly, form a unified system by means of which virtually all macroscopic mechanical systems, from the swinging of a pendulum to the motion of the planets in their orbits around the sun, may be investigated, and their behavior predicted. Newton did not merely state these laws of mechanics; he himself, using the mathematical tools of the calculus, showed how these fundamental laws could be applied to the solution of actual problems.

 

For this reason, Newton is often considered the greatest of all astronomers.

 

3 JESUS CHRIST c. 6 B.C. c. 3 0 A.D.

 

4 BUDDHA 5 6 3 B.C. 4 8 3 B.C.

 

Gautama Buddha, whose original name was Prince Siddhartha, was the founder of Buddhism, one of the world's great religions.

 

5 CONFUCIUS 5 5 1 B.C. 4 7 9 B.C.

 

6 ST. PAUL c. 4 A.D. c. 6 4 A.D.

 

7 TS'AI LUN fl. c. 1 0 5 A.D

 

8 JOHANN GUTENBERG 1400-1468

 

9 COLUMBUS 1451-1506

 

His ships left Spain.on August 3, 1492. Their first stop was at the Canary Islands, off the coast of Africa. They left the Canaries on September 6 and sailed due west. It was a long voyage, and his sailors became frightened and wished to turn back. Columbus, however, insisted upon continuing, and on October 12, 1492, land was sighted.

 

10 ALBERT EINSTEIN 1879-1955

 

11 LOUIS PASTEUR 1822-1895

 

13 ARISTOTLE 384 B.C. 322 B.C.

 

14 EUCLID fl. c. 300 B.C.

 

15 MOSES f I. 1 3 t h c. B.C.

 

16 CHARLES DARWIN 1809-1882

 

Charles Darwin, the originator of the theory of organic evolution by means of natural selection, was born in Shrewsbury, England, on February 12, 1809 (on exactly the same day that Abraham Lincoln was born).

 

Darwin set sail on the Beagle in 1831, at the age of twentytwo.

 

17 SHIH HUANG TI 2 5 9 B.C. 2 1 0 B.C.

 

The great Chinese emperor Shih Huang Ti, who ruled from 238-210 B.C, united China by force of arms and instituted a set of sweeping reforms. Those reforms have been a major factor in the cultural unity that China has maintained ever since.

 

The last of these were conquered in 221 B.C., and he could now have declared himself Wang (king) of all China. To emphasize, however, the complete break he was making with the past, he chose a new title, and called himself Shih Huang Ti, which means "the first emperor."

 

18 AUGUSTUS CAESAR 6 3 B.c.-l 4 A.D.

 

19 NICOLAUS COPERNICUS 1473-1543

 

20 ANTOINE LAURENT LAVOISIER 1743-1794

 

21 CONSTANTINE THE GREAT c. 280 - 337

 

22 JAMES WATT 1736-1819

 

23 MICHAEL FARADAY 1791-1867

 

24 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL 1831-1879

 

25 MARTIN LUTHER 1483-1546

 

26 GEORGE WASHINGTON 1732-1799

 

27 KARL MARX 1818-1883

 

The activities of those Marxist partiesactivities which have included propaganda, assassinations, terrorism, and rebellions in order to achieve power, plus wars, brutal repression, and bloody purges after reaching power-kept the world in turmoil for decades and have caused roughly 100 million deaths!

 

28 ORVILLE WRIGHT 1871- 194 8 & WILBUR WRIGHT 1867-1912

 

His successful flights, however, had already persuaded the United States government to sign a contract for the supply of airplanes to the U.S. War Department, and in 1909 the Federal budget included an allocation of $30,000 for Army aviation.

 

29 GENGHIS KHAN c. 1 1 6 2 - 1 2 2 7

 

30 ADAM SMITH 1723-1790

 

However, his lasting fame rests primarily on his great work, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes oj the Wealth oj Nations, which was published in 1776.

 

31 EDWARD DE VERE better known as "WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE" 1550-1604

 

32 JOHN DALTON 1766-1844

 

33 ALEXANDER THE GREAT 356 B.C. 323 B.C. 174

 

34 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 1769-1821

 

35 THOMAS EDISON 1847-1931

 

Probably his most original invention was 188 the phonograph, which he patented in 1877.

 

More important to the world, however, was his development of a practical incandescent light bulb in 1879.

 

In 1882, his company started producing electricity for homes in New York City, and thereafter the home use of electricity spread rapidly throughout the world.

 

36 ANTONY VAN LEEUWENHOEK 1632-1723

 

37 WILLIAM T. C. MORTON 1819-1868

 

Finally, on September 30, 1846, a perfect opportunity arose for testing ether on a patient. A man named Eben Frost walked into Morton's office with a terrible toothache and a willingness to try anything which might relieve the pain of the necessary extraction. Morton administered ether to him and then pulled his tooth. When Frost regained consciousness, he reported that he had felt no pain. A better result could hardly have been hoped for, and Morton could see success, fame, and fortune in front of him.

 

38 GUGLIELMO MARCONI 1874-1937

 

Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of the radio, was born in Bologna, Italy, in 1874. His family

 

By 1895, after only a year's work, Marconi succeeded in pro 201

 

ducing a working device. In 1896, he demonstrated his device in England, and received his first patent on the invention.

 

All these messages, by the way, were sent in the dot-anddash system of Morse code. It was known that the voice could also be transmitted by radio, but this was not done until 1906.

 

Radio broadcasting on a commercial scale only began in the early 1920s, but then its popularity and importance grew very quickly.

 

39 ADOLP HITLER 1889-1945

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40 PLATO 4 2 7 B.C. 3 4 7 B.C.

 

41 OLIVER CROMWELL 1599-1658

 

42 ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 1847-1922

 

It was there, in 1875, that he made the discoveries leading to his invention of the telephone. He filed a patent claim for his invention in February 1876, and it was granted a few weeks later.

 

43 ALEXANDER FLEMING 1881- 1 955

 

I t was in 1928 that Fleming made his great discovery.

 

In 1941, they tested penicillin on sick human beings. Their tests clearly showed that the new drug was astoundingly potent.

 

At first, penicillin was reserved only for the use of war casualties, but by 1944, it was available for the treatment of civilians in Britain and America. When the war ended, in 1945, the use of penicillin spread all over the world.

 

44 JOHN LOCKE 1632-1704

 

The book that first made Locke. famous was An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), in which he discussed the origin, nature, and limits of human knowledge.

 

In A Letter Concerning Toleration (first published anonymously, in 1689), Locke maintained that the state should not interfere with the free exercise of religion.

 

Of still greater importance was Locke's Two Treatises oj Government (1689), in which he presented the basic ideas underlying liberal constitutional democracy.

 

45 LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN 1770-1827

 

46 WERNER HEISENBERG 1901-1976

 

One of the consequences of Heisenberg's theory is the famous "uncertainty principle," which he himself formulated in 1927.

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47 LOUIS DAGUERRE 1787-1851

 

By 1837, he had succeeded in developing a practical system of photography, called the daguerreotype.

 

48 SIMON BOLIVAR 1783-1830

 

Simon BolIvar is often called "the George Washington of South America" because of his role in the liberation of five South American countries (Colombia, Venezula, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia) from Spanish rule. Few, if 'any, political figures have played so dominant a role in the history of an entire continent as he did.

 

The revolution against Spanish rule in Venezuela commenced in 1810, when the Spanish governor of Venezuela was deposed. A formal declaration of independence was made in 1811, and that same year BolIvar became an officer in the revolutionary army.

 

The turning point came in 1819, when Bolivar led his small, ragtag army across rivers, plains, and the high passes of the Andes in order to attack the Spanish troops in Colombia. There he won the crucial Battle of Boyaca (August 7, 1819), the true turning point of the struggle. Venezuela was liberated in 1821, and Ecuador in 1822.

 

By 1824, Bolivar's armies had completed the liberation of what is now Peru, and in 1825, the Spanish troops in Upper Peru (present-day Bolivia) were routed.

 

49 RENE DESCARTES 1596-1650

 

50 MICHELANGELO 1475-1564

 

51 POPE URBAN II 1042-1099

 

The action for which Urban II is principally remembered occurred on November 27, 1095. He had convoked a great church council, held at the city of Clermont in France. There, before a crowd of thousands, Urban delivered what was perhaps the single most effective speech in history-one that was to influence Europe for centuries to come.

 

Before he had finished, the multitude was shouting, "Deus Ie volt!" (God wills it), which was soon to become the battle cry of the crusaders. Within a few months, the First Crusade was under way.

 

It was to be followed by a long series of holy wars (there were eight 260 THE 100 major crusades and many smaller ones), which took place over a period of roughly two hundred years.

 

52 'UMAR IBN AL-KHATT AB c. 586 - 644

 

53 ASOKA 53 c. 300 B.C.- C. 232 B.C.

 

54 ST. AUGUSTINE 354-430

 

55 WILLIAM HARVEY 1578-1657

 

Harvey's great book, An Anatomical Treatise on the Movement of the Heart and Blood in Animals, published in 1628, has rightly been called the most important book in the entire history of physiology.

 

56 ERNEST RUTHERFORD 1871-1937

 

Radioactivity had been discovered in 1896 by the French scientist Antoine Henri Becquerel, while he was doing some experiments with uranium compounds.

 

At a single blow, Rutherford's paper (1911) shattered forever our common-sense picture of the world. If even a piece of metalseemingly the solidest of objects-was mostly empty space, then everything which we had regarded as substantial had suddenly dissolved into tiny specks rushing about in an immense void!

 

57 JOHN CALVIN 1509-1564

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In 1536, when he was twenty-seven years old, he published his best-known work, the Institutes of the Christian Religion. This book, which summarized the essential Protestant beliefs and presented them in comprehensive and systematic form, made him famous.

 

Calvin's Geneva was a rather austere and puritanical place. Not only were adultery and fornication considered serious crimes, but gambling, drunkenness, dancing, and the singing of

 

ribald songs were all prohibited, and could result in severe punishment. Attendance at church during prescribed hours was required by law, and lengthy sermons were customary.

 

58 GREGOR MENDEL 1822-1884

 

By 1865, he had derived his famous laws of heredity and presented them in a paper given before the Brunn Natural History Society.

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59 MAX PLANCK 1858-1947

 

60 JOSEPH LISTER 1827-1912

 

Lister's first great paper on antiseptic surgery was published in 1867.

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61 NIKOLAUS AUGUST OTTO 1832-1891

 

Nikolaus August Otto was the German inventor who, in 1876, built the first four-stroke internal combustion engine, the prototype of the hundreds of ...

 

62 FRANCISCO PIZARRO c. 1475 - 1541

 

Francisco Pizarro, the illiterate Spanish adventurer who conquered the Inca Empire in Peru, was born about 1475, in the city of Trujillo, Spain.

 

In September 1532, taking with him only 177 men and 62 horses, he marched inland.

 

However, Pizarro's conquest of an empire of over six million with a force of only 180 men is the most astonishing military feat in history.

 

63 HERNANDO CORTES 1485-1547

 

64 THOMAS JEFFERSON 1743-1826

 

Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States of -J!:.America, and the author of the Declaration of Independence, was born in 1743, in Shadwell, Virginia.

 

65 QUEEN ISABELLA I 1451-1504

 

66 JOSEPH STALIN 1879-1953

 

67 JULIUS CAESAR 100 B.C....

 

68 WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR c. 1027 - 1087

 

In the year 1066, Duke William of Normandy, with only a few thousand troops behind him, crossed the English Channel in an attempt to become ruler of England. His bold attempt succeeded-the last time that any foreign invasion of England has been successful.

 

The two armies met on October 14, 1066, at the celebrated Battle of Hastings. By the end of the day, William's cavalry and archers had succeeded in routing the Anglo-Saxon forces. Near nightfall, King Harold himself was killed. His two brothers had been killed earlier in the battle, and there was no English leader remaining with the stature to raise a new army or to contest William's claim to the throne. William was crowned in London that Christmas day.

 

69 SIGMUND FREUD 1856-1939

 

70 EDWARD JENNER 1749-1823

 

The English physician Edward Jenner was the man who developed and popularized the technique of vaccination as a preventive measure against the dreaded disease of smallpox.

 

71 WILHELM CONRAD RONTGEN 1845-1923

 

On November 8, 1895, Rontgen was doing some ex periments with cathode rays. Cathode rays consist of a stream of electrons.

 

In 1901, Rontgen was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics, the first one ever awarded.

 

72 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH 1685-1750

 

73 LAO TZU fl. 4 th C. B.C.

 

Taoism takes the view that the individual should not struggle against the Tao, but should submit to it and work with it. Actively seeking to gain or exercise power is not-so much immoral as it is foolish and futile. The Tao cannot be defeated; one should instead try to live in conformity with

 

74 VOLTAIRE 1694-1778

 

75 JOHANNES KEPLER 1571-1630

 

76 ENRICO FERMI 1901...

 

77 LEONHARD EULER 1707-1783

 

78 JEANJACQUES ROUSSEAU 1712-1778

 

79 NICCOLO MACHIA VELLI 1469-1527

 

80 THOMAS MAL THUS 1766-1834

 

81 JOHN F. KENNEDY 1917-1963

 

82 GREGORY PINCUS 1903-1967

 

83 MANI 216-276

 

84 LENIN 1870-1924

 

85 SUI WEN TI 541-604

 

86 VASCO DA GAMA c. 1460 - 1524

 

Before 1498, India had been isolated from Europe.

 

87 CYRUS THE GREAT c. 590 B.C. 529 B.C.

 

88 PETER THE GREAT 16...

 

89 MAO ZEDONG 1893-1976

 

90 FRANCIS BACON 1561-1626

 

91 HENRY FORD 1863-1947

 

92 MENCIUS c. 371 B.C.C. 289 B.C.

 

93 ZOROASTER c. 628 B.C.- C. 551 B.C.

 

The Iranian prophet Zoroaster was the founder of Zoroastrian ism, a religion that has endured for over 2,500 years and still has adherents today. He was also the author of the Gathas, the oldest part of the Avesta, the sacred scriptures of the Zoroastrians.

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94 QUEEN ELIZABETH I 1533-1603

 

(The contrast with Germany, where the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) killed over 25 percent of the population, is particularly striking.)

 

95 MIKHAIL GORBACHEV

 

96 MENES fl. c. 3100 B.C. 

 

97 CHARLEMAGNE 742-814

 

98 HOMER fl. 8th c. B.C.? 498

 

99 JUSTINIAN I 483-565

 

100 MARA VIRA c. 599 B.C. c. 527 B.C.

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The People in This Book: Where Did They Come From?

 

Great Britain .......................................... 18

Germany & Austria .................................. 15

France .................................................... 9

Italy ....................................................... 8

Greece ................................................... 5

Spain ..................................................... 3

Russia .................................................... 4

Other Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 7

TOTAL EUROPE 69

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United States ........................................... 8

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South America ......................................... 1

New Zealand............................................ 1

Africa ..................................................... 3

 

China ................................... 7

India ................................... 3

Mongolia ................................ 1

Western Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

TOTAL ASIA 18

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The People in this Book: When Did They Flourish?

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Before 600 B.C ............................. 3

600 B.c.-201 B.C .......................... 13

200 B.c.-1400 A.D......................... 16

16 15th century .............................. 4

16th century ............................................ 9

17th century ............................................ 9

18th century ........................................... 12

19th century ........................................... 18

20th century ........................................... 16

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The People in this Book: What Did They Do

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Scientists & Inventors ............................... 36

Political & Military Leaders ....................... 31

Secular Philosophers ................................. 14

Religious Leaders ..................................... 11

Artistic & Literary Figures .......................... 5

Explorers ................................................ 2

Industrialists ............................................ 1