The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History
Revised and Updated for the Nineties
by Michael H. Hart

Mr. Hart's very interesting book contains biographies of all the following people, ranked in order from most influential to less influential, along with the author's reasons for so ranking them. The book is available at most bookstores and libraries.

The links will take you to a site on the Web about the person named
(not to a chapter in the book).

Muhammad Isaac Newton Jesus Christ Buddha Confucius St. Paul Ts'ai Lun Johann Gutenberg Christopher Columbus Albert Einstein Louis Pasteur Galileo Galilei Aristotle Euclid Moses Charles Darwin Shih Huang Ti Augustus Caesar Nicolaus Copernicus Antoine Laurent Lavoisier Constantine the Great James Watt Michael Faraday James Clerk Maxwell Martin Luther George Washington Karl Marx Orville and Wilbur Wright Genghis Kahn Adam Smith Edward de Vere John Dalton Alexander the Great Napoleon Bonaparte Thomas Edison Antony van Leeuwenhoek William T.G. Morton Guglielmo Marconi Adolf Hitler Plato Oliver Cromwell Alexander Graham Bell Alexander Fleming John Locke Ludwig van Beethoven Werner Heisenberg Louis Daguerre Simon Bolivar Rene Descartes Michelangelo Pope Urban II 'Umar ibn al-Khattab Asoka St. Augustine William Harvey Ernest Rutherford John Calvin Gregor Mendel Max Planck Joseph Lister Nikolaus August Otto Francisco Pizarro Hernando Cortes Thomas Jefferson Queen Isabella I Joseph Stalin Julius Caesar William the Conqueror Sigmund Freud Edward Jenner Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen Johann Sebastian Bach Lao Tzu Voltaire Johannes Kepler Enrico Fermi Leonhard Euler Jean-Jacques Rousseau Nicoli Machiavelli Thomas Malthus John F. Kennedy Gregory Pincus Mani Lenin Sui Wen Ti Vasco da Gama Cyrus the Great Peter the Great Mao Zedong Francis Bacon Henry Ford Mencius Zoroaster Queen Elizabeth I Mikhail Gorbachev Menes Charlemagne Homer Justinian I Mahavira

Runner-ups:

St. Thomas Aquinas Archimedes Charles Babbage Cheops Marie Curie Benjamin Franklin Mohandas Gandhi Abraham Lincoln Ferdinand Magellan Leonardo da Vinci

If you find better sites about these people (more informative, more artistic, more exhaustive) than the ones listed here, let me know and I may change the links.

Biographies and other information about many of these people and their works may be found at Access Foundation's Encyclopedia Britannica's Great Books site.

Read about the Religious Affiliation of the 100 Most Influential People in History.