The Greats of History^©

Judging history's greatest people is difficult. We can say with certainty the Gold Medal winner of an Olympic high jump was the best in that competition. Judgment had no effect on the outcome. It was head to head competition with one winner and many losers. Conversely, when someone creates a list purporting to rank the "best" or "greatest" in a given field, the list's credibility is open to question because of the judgment involved.

As the twentieth century came to a close, we were barraged with lists of "The Greatest of the Millennium", of "All Time", the "Last 100 Years", and so on. Some were akin to Trivial Pursuit games created and publicized by those whose job it was to sell books, TV time or magazines. As such, some of these lists must be taken with a grain of salt. Others were quite credible. Five efforts to rank the history's greats are covered below and while some are more credible than others, collectively, they yield a clear pattern - Jews are consistently included in disproportionate numbers among history's greatest.

Charles Murray's Human Accomplishment

One recent effort is quite credible. Published in late 2003, Charles Murray's book, Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences; 800 B.C. to 1950, is the product of more than five years of research and analysis. In his work, Murray used an interesting, if controversial, technique called "historiometry" to measure greatness. The approach literally calculates the space devoted to major figures in 167 authoritative encyclopedias, biographic dictionaries, and other reference works published by leading experts in various fields of endeavor.

At first blush, the technique seems superficial in today's "15 minutes of fame" world where agents and publicists devote whole careers to spinning trivial events into press coverage measured in column inches.

But Murray distinguishes fame from eminence in explaining and defending his approach. In the sciences, for example, he utilized 37 major reference works published since the 1960s including: The Cambridge Illustrated History of the World's Science, Larousse Dictionary of Scientists, Histoire Generale des Sciences, Scienza e tecnica, and 33 comparable publications. The premise is simply that experts devote more words to describe the achievements of the great than they do to lesser figures and the collective wisdom of multiple experts provides the most credible approach known for identifying and ranking greatness.

Murray culled the data by excluding those written up by fewer than half the experts. This eliminated eccentric, outlying opinions and individual favorites that do not stand up to the collective wisdom of multiple experts. Potential Euro-centrism was dealt with by creating separate inventories, such as Chinese Literature, Indian philosophy and Japanese Art. National chauvinism was averted by drawing on experts from around the world and in literature, by not using write-ups by experts who live in the same country as a particular author. Cutting off the study at 1950 and focusing only on those who reached age 40 or were dead by that year helped reduce "fashion" and any tendency to judge recent events and people disproportionately important versus earlier figures.

Murray goes to great lengths to demonstrate that different approaches to looking at the data would yield essentially the same people and rankings. He provides a solid defense for his analysis and conclusions.

Murray identified and ranked the 4002 most important figures in: the sciences, literature, music, art, and philosophy from 800 B.C. to 1950. (In fact it was 3,869 individuals, since some were important in more than one domain.) Moreover, he surveyed the significant events that transpired in each field over the years and analyzed the circumstances that stimulated high levels of achievement.

Murray's conclusions may generate controversy, just as some of his earlier efforts have, including The Bell Curve. Nonetheless, most knowledgeable readers will conclude that while one can disagree with this or that point or ranking, ultimately, Murray got the big picture right. Illustrating this is a small exchange on the Slate.com Web site, which was generally critical of Murray's work. Timothy Noah, a Slate columnist suggested Murray was biased ranking Marie Curie 14th among the great physicists, four places behind her husband, Pierre. "Foul" cried Nash citing Amazon's "Search Inside the Book" list which puts Marie 5th and Pierre 13th. Noah's conjecture about possible Murray prejudice is curious since the technique makes bias doubtful unless it represents a systematic bias by the 37 science experts Murray drew upon. In any case, the telling counterpoint was made by a knowledgeable Slate reader who responded:

". . .your Amazon method and high school method are misleading you. Marie Curie was one of the greatest 'chemists' of all time, . . .a great physicist, . . .the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne and justly, a hero to women researchers everywhere. None of that demands that as a physicist alone she be superior to Pierre, who although also a chemist devoted more of his research efforts to physics than did Marie. But it means that she will be cited more frequently in Amazon, and what she did. . .is easier for a high-schooler. Before meeting Marie, Pierre was co-discoverer. . .of piezoelectric materials. . .He explored the thermodynamics of magnetic materials ("Curie's Law" and the Curie temperature). He invented laboratory equipment that still bears his name. Most of his own (no Marie) research is just harder to state in a few words, and in many ways he was an established scientist, which Marie was not That's why you're off base in this argument -- he's not as memorable to non-physicists. I'll agree that Marie is a more important figure to science, just not necessarily to physics."

In short, Murray's technique yielded a more correct conclusion than his critic at Slate.com.

Perhaps because Murray looks only at the arts and sciences from 800 BC to 1950, but not political, commercial, military, religious, or other domains of accomplishment, his lists do not consider figures considered great by the others covered in this chapter. Jesus, Paul and Moses are three of the most influential people of all time according to Michael Hart (see below). Hart's list suggests Jews have been disproportionately important for thousands of years. Murray's approach, however, yields only 11 important Jews before 1800. (All of the Jews identified by Murray are included as Exhibit 3a). Murray comments:

"In all those 26 centuries (800 B.C. to 1800), the roster of significant Western figures includes not one Jewish artist, scientist, physician or inventor and just one writer (Fernando Rojas), one composer (Salamone Rossi), and one mathematician (Paul Guldin). This sparse representation in European arts and sciences through the beginning of 19C reflects Jews' near-total exclusion from the arts and sciences. Jews were not merely discouraged from entering universities and the professions, they were often forbidden by law from doing so. Socially they were despised. . . In a practical sense, legal equality for Jews first occurred in the newly formed United States, where Jews were given full rights under federal law"

What Murray seems to take away in this lack of Jewish achievement before 1800, he promptly gives back in his analysis of what happened next. Again to quote him:

"Until nearly 1800, Jews were excluded. Then over about 70 years, the legal exclusions are lifted and the social exclusion eases. What happens? 'The suddenness with which Jews began to appear. . .is nothing short of astounding' writes historian Raphael Patai. 'It seemed as if a huge reservoir of Jewish talent, hitherto dammed up behind the wall of Talmudic learning were suddenly released to spill over into all fields of Gentile cultural activity.'"

Murray says that in the four decades from 1830 to 1870, sixteen Jews appeared on the list. Then, in the next four decades, the number grew to 40 and between 1910 and 1950, it soared to 114. In fact, twenty percent of the great historical figures identified by Murray between 1910 and 1950 were Jews. He concludes that by rights, there should have been 28 Jews among the 1277 great people over that 80 year period; instead there were "at least 158." This is six times what he expected. Further, the consistent growth in the number of Jews on the list suggests that by 1950, the performance substantially exceeded the six fold over representation.

Murray goes beyond his basic 1950 cut off date to make one further point. The next chapter of this book will establish that Jews have won 22 percent of all Nobel Prizes awarded. Murray looks at the Nobel data differently. He breaks the award period into two halves. Looking first at the Prizes awarded between 1901 and 1950, he finds Jews won 14 percent of the Nobels. Between 1950 and 2000, however, they won 29 percent - this after six million Jews, roughly one-third of their total population, were destroyed in the Holocaust.

By way of contrast, Murray notes that after 1950:

• Japanese earned two percent of the scientific and four per cent of the literature Nobels.
• Indians earned one percent of the science and none of the literature Nobels,
• Chinese won two percent of each category.
• Arabs picked up one percent of the science and two percent of the literature Nobels, and
• Africans earned four percent of the Literature and none of the science Nobels.

Murray sees an accelerating trajectory for the Japanese and Chinese and opines they may soon grow to impressive numbers, but in the end, it is the Jews whose numbers have simply dwarfed the rest

Jewish achievement is not the principal thrust of Murray's book. Nonetheless, in his 2750 year survey of 4,002 great figures in history, he singles out only one group - the Jews - for separate discussion.

Most Influential

An early contender among recent lists of "The Greatest" was Michael Hart's The 100 -- A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History. Copyrighted in 1978 by Hart and later republished in 1987, the book got good reviews in the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, The London Daily Mail, Newsweek and other publications. The Wall Street Journal said, "A fascinating book! . . . a concise and readable history of the world. Hart proves to be a clear writer and a fine teacher." The London Daily Mail said: "Hart's work is admirably un-chauvinistic, excluding mighty Americans and finding room for totally obscure names."

In the opening section of his book, Hart explained the book was his list of the 100 "most influential" persons in history, not the 100 "greatest" persons in history. He says that while Mother Cabrini might have made his list of the world's "greatest" persons, she would not make the list of the most "influential". Stalin on the other hand would not make his list of the greatest, but he was "honored" as #63 on Hart's list among the most influential. Stalin was not as influential as his mentor, Lenin (#15) who, in turn was not as influential as Marx (#11).

One can quibble with Hart's rankings and with some of the names he included as well as some he did not. Winston Churchill single-handedly held the small island nation of Great Britain together in defiance of Hitler through the darkest days of World War II. Had he not led the British after Chamberlain stepped down (Churchill was not first choice), Britain would almost certainly have capitulated or negotiated a very unsatisfactory peace with Hitler. Europe would be a very different place today had Churchill not led the country, pulled in Roosevelt and worked in harness with Roosevelt and Stalin to defeat Hitler. Churchill does not make Hart's list. Abraham Lincoln did not make the cut either, though few could reasonably argue the United States would have remained together had he not been elected President in 1861. On the other hand, in retrospect, few would put John F. Kennedy on the list. Kennedy handled the Cuban Missile Crises well, but even in that success, with the later revealed U.S. concessions, his earlier efforts to assassinate Castro, the deaths of the Diems in Viet Nam and the absence of other major accomplishments all suggest Kennedy does not deserve to be #80 on Hart's list. As noted previously, one should not take these lists as gospel.

Interestingly, Hart chose The Prophet Muhammad as #1, the most influential person of all time. Hart did so not because if was the politically correct thing to do in the 80s, nor obviously because of events surrounding September 11th 2001 - he compiled his list years earlier. He did it because while Christianity is larger in terms of numbers of followers, Muhammad had a greater personal influence on the formulation of the Moslem religion than Jesus did in building Christianity. One could say Christ shares the credit with St Paul and so Christians got two of the top ten slots, but Muhammad got #1.

Jesus made it onto the list, but as #3 behind #1 Muhammad and #2 Isaac Newton. Hart's entire list including the honorable mentions is provided in Exhibit 3b.

Towards the end of his book, Hart breaks out where his 100 most influential people were born (and where most of them lived their lives). It is worth noting - and as mentioned in the London Daily Mail review cited above - that despite being an American, Hart thought only seven Americans deserved to be on his list. There are 71 from Europe and 18 from Asia. At seven, the United States comes in tied with China and Western Asia (7 each) but behind Italy (8) France (10) Germany & Austria (15) and Great Britain (18).

One of Hart's most interesting observations is how important the Scots have been. To quote him:

"It is interesting to note that, of the eighteen British on this list, no fewer than five came from Scotland. (All five, in fact, are in the top half of the list.) Since the Scots constitute only one-eighth of one percent of the world's population, this represents a truly astonishing concentration of talent and achievement."

Hart did not mention that Jews have eight names on the list - 35 times what we would expect. It would be nine if one were to count Lenin (#15), but Lenin had only one Jewish grandparent.

The eight Jews and their rankings are:

• Jesus Christ (#3)
• St. Paul (#6)
• Albert Einstein (#10)
• Karl Marx (#11)
• Moses (#16)
• Sigmund Freud (#32)
• Gregory Pincus (#81)
• Niels Bohr (#100)

And, following Hart's lead in describing the Scots, six of the eight Jews are in the top half (five in the top quarter) of his ranking.

A&E's Biographies of the Millennium

Narrowing the focus to just the last 1000 years, the Arts & Entertainment Channel (A&E) took a stab at the similar listing as the Millennium approached. The results are also included in Exhibit 3b. Authorship of this list is harder to discern, but with A&E's continuing job of producing videos for its Biography series, one expects they have staff members capable of researching, writing and producing good biographical material.

The A&E list has a good deal of overlap with the Hart Book and both lists use "influential" as the standard for choosing who belongs on the list. Of course, having not survived to the year 1,000, Muhammad, Jesus, St. Paul, Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, Aristotle and a few others from Hart's list don't qualify for A&E's compilation.

Conversely, many make the A&E list who didn't qualify for Hart's list or only made "Honorable Mention". These include Churchill, Marco Polo, Leonardo da Vinci, Watson & Crick, and St. Thomas Aquinas.

If Hart was a bit loose in giving John F. Kennedy the number 80 slot, A&E trumps him with Elvis Presley (#57), Walt Disney (#62), Princess Diana (#73), The Beatles (#76), Steven Spielberg (#91) Charlie Chaplin (#95) and Louie Armstrong (#98) counted among the 100 most influential persons of the last 1000 years. One senses a tilt towards "entertainers" by the "Arts & Entertainment" judges.

Perhaps because of the overlaps between Hart's work and A&E's, and their shared review of at least the last 1000 years, it is not particularly surprising that the A&E list also contains eight Jews. It drops the three who died before the year 1,000 (Jesus, Moses and St. Paul), but adds J. Robert Oppenheimer, Jonas Salk, and Steven Spielberg.

Despite a few questionable choices and a tilt towards Americans (31 of the 100 people honored are Americans versus seven on Hart's list), the A&E list again represents a remarkable showing by the Jews. Eight Jews is 35 times what it should given that it encompasses all humanity over the last 1000 years.

InteliQuest Learning Systems' World's 100 Greatest People

InteliQuest publishes audiotapes. Its' focus is tape compilations covering such topics as the great books, great composers, great thinkers, great investors and great people. It was started by Steven DeVore who earlier founded Sybervision, a large company which developed 60 learning programs. InteliQuest does not provide the criterion for their selection of the "100 Greatest People" but when one reviews their list, many names are familiar. It will come as no surprise that eight of the 100 are Jewish. The InteliQuest list is not sequenced in terms of importance. Instead, it groups similar careers together. The eight Jews include: Karl Marx; Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, Abraham, Moses, Jesus Christ, and The Apostle Paul. All are highlighted as part of Exhibit 3b.

Time's 100 and Person of the Century

Not about to miss out on a good thing, Time put together its own list of "100," in its case choosing "those individuals who - for better or worse - most influenced the last 100 years. They are organized into five categories with one singular distinction for the "Person of the Century".

We can end the suspense right now. The person of the Century is Albert Einstein. What are the odds? Not bad for a Jewish professor who completely changed our understanding of the universe.

Time's categories (all included in Exhibit 3b) are:

1. Leaders and Revolutionaries
2. Artists & Entertainers
3. Builders & Titans
4. Scientists & Thinkers
5. Heroes & Icons: Anne Frank and Harvey Milk

Included on Time's lists are fictional characters ("The American GI" and Bart Simpson), an unidentifiable person (The Chinese man who stood in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square), and a family: (The Kennedys). They also include partnerships: Wilbur & Orville Wright, Mary Louis & Richard Leakey, Rogers & Hammerstein, Edmund Hilary & Tenzing Norgay and Watson & Crick. In the end, Time's "100" is really Time's "101 plus the Kennedys".

Like A&E's list, one can quibble with some selections. Princes Diana, Charlie Chaplin, The Beatles, Stephen Spielberg, and Louis Armstrong all make it again. Bart Simpson is new to the list as are Pete Rozelle, Pele (the soccer player) and Aretha Franklin. Yet again, the media appear incapable of resisting charismatic entertainers! Time will tell, but skeptics doubt some of Time's names will be little remembered in 2010, let alone 2100. Time's handling of John F. Kennedy is particularly interesting. As you will recall, Hart included him as #80 on his list of the most influential people of all time. Time Magazine, aggregates the entire family (John, Bobby, Teddy, Joe, etc.) into a single entry. Thus, for Time, individually, John F. Kennedy doesn't even make the list of the most influential individuals of the 20th Century, let alone all of human history.

In any case, Jews take fourteen of Time's 101+ slots (not counting Lenin who is one-quarter Jewish). Broken out by group, the Jews include:

• Leaders & Revolutionaries: David Ben Gurion
• Artists & Entertainers: Richard Rogers, Oscar Hammerstein, Bob Dylan and Steven Spielberg
• Builders & Titans: David Sarnoff, William Levitt, Louis B Mayer and Estee Lauder
• Scientists & Thinkers: Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein & Jonas Salk Heroes & Icons: Anne Frank and Harvey Milk

Treating Time's material as basically an American list (about 2/3rds of those named are Americans), fourteen Jews is nine times what one would expect.

And, of course, Einstein was Time's "Person of the Century"

While the names change from list to list, it deserves mention that many names end up on everyone's list. And while one can criticize any of the lists, taken together those individuals included on most or all of the lists are genuinely deserving of being recognized among the greats. Moreover, their constant identification of large numbers of Jews establishes conclusively that Jews are disproportionately represented among history's greatest.