Becks points me to this question:
who’s the most important — meaning influential, as in, could play the lead in the book or movie version of, [Insert Name]: And How S/he Changed America** — historical figure about whom most people know nothing?
The guy who discovered fire, I'd guess. Or agriculture.
Oh, c'mon. We know who discovered fire! Prometheus, of course.
Fire and agriculture discovered in America? News to me.
While those two people are certainly important, they are not historical figures, in the sense of being documented. And they don't quite appear to fit the question, either: It's not that there is a lot of stuff known about them that the general public is ignorant of, it's that there is no information at all apart from "They must have existed".
Tesla, the Man, not the eCar
stay tuned for spam filter fodder-no offense intended;
While those two people are certainly important, they are not historical figures, in the sense of being documented. And they don't quite appear to fit the question, either: It's not that there is a lot of stuff known about them that the general public is ignorant of, it's that there is no information at all apart from "They must have existed".
Posted by Rolf | January 24, 2008 1:44 PM
It doesn't say that they were American; it just says that they changed American history. And agriculture and fire certainly did that.
I think the qualifier "American" limits the scope to those who changed American history specifically. The guy/gal who discovered fire didn't change America any more than he changed the Great Rift Valley, or Mesopotamia, or wherever he/she happened to be back in the day.
Gavrilo Princip. Started the First World War.
Al Smith and Claude Shannon come to mind. Maybe Count Rumford though I guess I don't know that's as America-specific (though, one hell of a story).
Tesla, the Man, not the eCar
Damn! I was going to post 'first Tesla!' and someone beat me to it.
Tie between Philo Farnsworth and John von Neuman
The "discovery" of fire or agriculture predated the existence of "America," by which the writer clearly means the United States of America. Therefore the person who first harnessed fire or developed agriculture could not have had any effect on America and could not have "changed" it.
http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/VonNeumann.html
Tie between Philo Farnsworth and John von Neuman
Posted by Bergamot | January 24, 2008 2:25 PM
"Oh Abraham, that war really took a lot out of you. Why don't we go to the theater on Friday?"
Eli Whitney, though he isn't really forgotten, I think his impact is not usually understood. Not only did he invent the machine that made slavery so profitable, he also patented the means of mass producing rifles used to fight it.
Norman Ernest Borlaug
Perhaps more than anyone else, Borlaug is responsible for the fact that throughout the postwar era, except in sub-Saharan Africa, global food production has expanded faster than the human population, averting the mass starvations that were widely predicted -- for example, in the 1967 best seller Famine -- 1975! The form of agriculture that Borlaug preaches may have prevented a billion deaths.
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1970/borlaug-bio.html
+1 for Norman Borlaug. Hardly anybody knows who he is, and he literally changed the face of the planet.
He's pretty much the only person who actually deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
Ron Paul.
He re-ignited the spark of freedom still smoldering in much of the American populace today. And he also exposed the beltway libertarians as charlatans. This will surely change America, as once the revolution happens, we will know who to put against the wall first.
More possible picks:
Reinhold Niebuhr - major influence on American war philosophy preceding the Cold War.
John Winthrop - introduced the notion of America as a "City on a Hill". If you're going to influence American history, start early - he did, in the 17th century.
John Marshall - 4th USSC Chief Justice, "inventor" of judicial review.
The other objections being ignored for the moment, I would choose the first person that created a weapon. Before that, humans and their ancestors were nothing more than prey food.
TFA clearly states AMERICAN historical figure. So the inventor of fire and of the first weapon (some anonymous pre-hominid if Arthur C. Clarke is to be believed) are plainly ineligible.
Our knowledge of our own history is so lacking that the candidates are legion. People may think they know everything there is to know about Benjamin Franklin, but I suspect that very few actually do. One of my favorite lesser-knowns is John C. Fremont, "the Pathfinder," who was a trailblazer of the Old West, Civil War general, United States Senator and (ironically enough) first Presidential candidate of the Republican Party.
I'll second Tesla, Farnsworth, and von Neumann.
Major props go to Norman Borlaug, but I think he belongs in the world history version of the question, not the American history version.
And yes, the pre-historic entries just seem a silly way to avoid the otherwise interesting question.
I second Count Rumford.
Here's one: Edward Wigglesworth (1693-1765).
(In 1722, he was named to the first divinity professorship in North America, at Harvard. He turned out to be a closet Unitarian. Whoops. American intellectual history, not to mention three centuries of Harvard-Yale animosity, proceeded from that event.)
Marc Andressen.
Or Tim Berners-Lee.
Probably both.
I'll bite.
But first there are nits to pick. Agriculture was "invented" in different places - in the Indus, and Yangtze river valleys, later in North America, earlier in Mesopotamia.
Norman Borlaug has changed the world, but not America.
Credit for AC power belongs to George Westinghouse, who brought it to market. Without Westinghouse, Tesla would have been just another cranky inventor.
Who would I choose? I think you could make a really good case for either George C. Marshall or Vannevar Bush. Marshall was responsible for American economic aid to Europe after WWII (in which he also played some part), setting the internationalist tone in US foreign policy that continues to the present day. Bush was one of FDR's principal science advisers and ran the agency that oversaw the Manhattan project. After the war he wrote the influential Science, the Endless Frontier, which advocated major government funding for basic research and eventually led to the creation of the NSF. He also did early research in analog computing (he was Claude Shannon's thesis adviser), and wrote an essay (in the Atlantic, no less) on an electronic memory system remarkably similar to the internet.
John,
just a hint: Tesla? way more than 'just' AC
A historical figure about whom most people know nothing but who changed the world?
Norman Borlaug.
Norman Borlaug, Norman Borlaug, Norman Borlaug.
It doesn't say that they were American; it just says that they changed American history. And agriculture and fire certainly did that.
Ahem . . . SHENANIGANS!
The discoverers of fire and agriculture didn't change American history any more than Julius Caesar did. In the same way, I will not change your great great grandson's life; I will simply pre-date it.
I'll add my vote for Norman Borlaug. Honestly, though, how many of you people learned about him from that West Wing episode?
http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech-info/topics/borlaug/index.html
re: Norman Borlaug
Jan 13, 2008 - Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it’s an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American poll as the most admired person of the 20th century. Bill Gates, infamous for ... been decapitated in effigy in “I Hate Gates” Web sites and hit with a pie in the face. As for Norman Borlaug . . . who the heck is Norman Borlaug? Yet a deeper look might lead you to rethink your answers. Borlaug, father of ...
www.nytimes.com/.
http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=Norman+Borlaug
Gavrilo Pincep - the person who shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and kicked off WW I. WW I brought America onto the world stage as a military power.
Eli Whitney, though he isn't really forgotten, I think his impact is not usually understood. Not only did he invent the machine that made slavery so profitable, he also patented the means of mass producing rifles used to fight it.
Whitney, for interchangable parts, is a good one. Horace Smith (of Smith & Wesson), inventor of the repeating rifle and metallic cartridge, isn't a bad choice, either.
And of course, a later topic on this blog stirs me to mention Alexander Norris. Sure, about all he did was persuade his two sons-in-law to get along, and go into business together. But it turned out to be pretty important. Their names? William Procter and James Gamble.
Farnsworth, definitely, but also Shannon/Shockley/Bardeen for inventing the transistore, and Kilby/Noyce for the integrated cirtuit.
"It doesn't say that they were American; it just says that they changed American history. And agriculture and fire certainly did that."
I think that if you can drop the word "American" and still give the same answer, then you're doing it wrong.
norman borlaug. norman borlaug. there are no other answers. he is responsible for 1 in 7 people being alive. without a doubt the most influential person in American and world history. you cannot say saving a billion lives isn't the most influential act in the history of the world. cause it is.
norman borlaug. norman borlaug. there are no other answers. he is responsible for 1 in 7 people being alive. without a doubt the most influential person in American and world history. you cannot say saving a billion lives isn't the most influential act in the history of the world. cause it is.