Albert Einstein 1879 – 1955

1. Albert Einstein 1879 – 1955 He bumped Newton from the pinnacle of physics and painted a fantastic new picture of our universe. In the process, Albert Einstein changed the political and scientific balance of power in our century and for the foreseeable future.

2. Henry Ford 1863 – 1947 His revolutionary assembly line enabled him to sell his cars at a price the average American family could afford, and to double his workers' wages while cutting hours. What had been a toy of the rich became a necessity of life, spawning gas stations, superhighways and traffic jams around the world.

3. Sigmund Freud 1856 – 1939 Freud's emphasis on the power of the unconscious to influence behavior broadened our view of human nature and sexuality and gave rise to the age of self-examination.

4. Mohandas Gandhi 1869 – 1948, Gandhi's powerful strategy, called satyagraha, involved nonviolent noncooperation, boycotts of all things British, civil disobedience, marches and fasts. His methods use for Indian independence have been adopted by protest movements throughout the world.

5. Adolf Hitler 1889 – 1945 Along with his mastery of propaganda, his ideology of racial purity and his ruthless political skills, Hitler possessed a diabolical personal magnetism. By the time Hitler was defeated in 1945, as many as 77 million people had died, leaving him responsible for more death than any other man in the history of the world.

6. Edwin Hubble 1889 – 1953 His 1924 discovery that the Andromeda nebula is located beyond the known boundaries of the Milky Way forced other astronomers to revise their thinking: The existence of multiple galaxies meant the universe was far larger than imagined.

7. Helen Keller 1880 – 1968 An illness when she was 19 months old left her deaf, blind and mute. With the help of a teacher named Anne Sullivan -- "the miracle worker" -- Helen Keller learned to understand language, read, write, hear, and speak. She remains proof that disability does not mean inability.

8. Martin Luther King 1929 – 1968 Martin Luther King Jr.'s crusade for equality started with a protest of the bus system in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955, and peaked in the nation's capital. King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and in 1986 became only the third American whose birthday is observed as a national holiday. His call to "let freedom ring" still resonates.

9. Vladimir Lenin 1870 – 1924 He led the October 1917 revolution that delivered Russia to the Bolsheviks and started the worldwide spread of the Soviet-style communism. A fighter against czarist injustice he laid the foundation for decades of totalitarianism.

10. Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013 He roused South Africa's black majority – and sympathizers abroad -- to rebel against the system of racial tyranny known as apartheid. Nelson Mandela's courage and resolve earned him a Nobel Peace Prize, the presidency of his country and the admiration of millions around the world.

11. Mao Zedong 1893 – 1976 His Long March lead the Red Army, from resistance against the Japanese to defeat of the Nationalists and the rise, in 1949, of the People's Republic. A brilliant warrior, Mao was a despotic dictator. Mao cast a giant shadow on the world, and a darker one on his own people.

12. Guglielmo Marconi 1874 – 1937, Guglielmo Marconi's transmission of a signal – the Morse Code letter S -- across the Atlantic in 1901 was a worldwide sensation. It opened the airwaves for today's complex network of global communications.

13. Kwame Nkrumah 1909 – 1972 His radical push for Ghanaian self-governance in the 1950s triggered decolonization throughout the African continent, which led to the end of European domination.

14. Orville (1871 – 1948) and Wilbur (1867 – 1912) Wright In 1903, Orville and Wilbur succeeded in flying the first powered airplane. Flight time: 12 seconds. Mankind's view of the world -- and of its own power -- had changed forever.