The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History is a 1978 book by Michael H. Hart, reprinted in 1992 with revisions. It is a ranking of the 100 people who, according to Hart, most influenced human history.^[1]

The first person on Hart's list is the Prophet of Islam Muhammad.^[2] Hart asserted that Muhammad was "supremely successful" in both the religious and secular realms. He also believed that Muhammad's role in the development of Islam was far more influential than Jesus' collaboration in the development of Christianity. He attributes the development of Christianity to St. Paul, who played a pivotal role in its dissemination."^[3]

The 1992 revisions included the demotion of figures associated with Communism, such as Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong, and the introduction of Mikhail Gorbachev. Hart took sides in the Shakespearean authorship issue and substituted Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for William Shakespeare. Hart also substituted Niels Bohr and Henri Becquerel with Ernest Rutherford, thus correcting an error in the first edition. Henry Ford was also promoted from the "Honorary Mentions" list, replacing Pablo Picasso. Finally, some of the rankings were re-ordered, although no one listed in the top ten changed position.

Hart wrote another book in 1999, entitled A View from the Year 3000,^[4] voiced in the perspective of a person from that future year and ranking the most influential people in history. Roughly half of those entries are fictional people from 2000–3000, but the remainder are actual people. These were taken mostly from the 1992 edition, with some re-ranking of order.

Hart's Top 10 (from the 1992 edition)[link]

Rank	Name	Time Frame	Image	Occupation	Influence
1	Muhammad	c. 570–632		Secular and religious leader	The central human figure of Islam, regarded by Muslims as a prophet of God and the last messenger. Active as a social reformer, diplomat, merchant, philosopher, orator, legislator, military leader, humanitarian, philanthropist.
2	Isaac Newton	1643–1727		Scientist	English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian. His law of universal gravitation and three laws of motion laid the groundwork for classical mechanics.
3	Jesus Christ	7–2 BC – 26–36 AD		Spiritual leader	The central figure of Christianity, revered by Christians as the Son of God and the incarnation of God.
4	Buddha	563–483 BC		Spiritual leader	Spiritual teacher and philosopher from ancient India. Founder of Buddhism and is also considered an Gautama Buddha in Hinduism.
5	Confucius	551–479 BC		Philosopher	Chinese thinker and social philosopher, whose teachings and philosophy have deeply influenced Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese and Indonesian thought and life. Founded Confucianism, and influenced Neo-Confucianism and New Confucianism.
6	St. Paul	5–67 AD		Christian apostle	One of the most notable of early Christian missionaries, credited with proselytizing and spreading Christianity outside of Palestine (mainly to the Romans) and author of numerous letters of the New Testament of the Bible.
7	Cài Lún	50–121 AD		Political official in imperial China	Widely regarded as the inventor of paper and the papermaking process.
8	Johannes Gutenberg	1398–1468		Inventor	German printer who invented the mechanical printing press.
9	Christopher Columbus	1451–1506	70px	Explorer	Italian navigator, colonizer and explorer whose voyages led to general European awareness of the American continents.
10	Albert Einstein	1879–1955		Scientist	German theoretical physicist, best known for his theory of relativity and specifically mass–energy equivalence, expressed by the equation E = mc2.

See also[link]

• Time 100

References[link]

1. ^ Michael H. Hart The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History. first published in 1978, reprinted with minor revisions 1992. ISBN 978-0-8065-1068-2
2. ^ The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History^{[dead link]}
3. ^ Michael H. Hart, "The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History", Citadel Publishing, 2000, ISBN 978-0-8065-1350-8
4. ^ Michael H. Hart. A view from the year 3000: a ranking of the 100 most influential persons of all time; first published in 1999

External links[link]

• Religious Affiliation of History's 100 Most Influential People

Dan Buettner
Buettner in October 2010
Born	1960 St. Paul, Minnesota
Occupation	explorer, educator

Dan Buettner (born 1960 in St. Paul, Minnesota) is an American explorer, educator, author, public speaker and co-producer of an Emmy Award-winning documentary who also holds three world records for endurance bicycling.^[1][2][3] He is the founder of the online Quest Network, Inc., which provides opportunities for students to interactively engage with explorers on expedition.^[3] In February 2007, an expedition led by Buettner to Nicoya, Costa Rica uncovered the longest-lived people known in the Western Hemisphere.^[4][5]

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Raised by an adventurous father, Buettner's appreciation of travel was encouraged by a series of international trips he won as a teenager selling newspapers.^[1] His brothers Steve and Nick also followed in their father's footsteps.

After graduating from the College of St. Thomas in 1984, Buettner took a year to explore Spain before taking a job with National Public Radio in Washington, D.C. recruiting celebrity participation in a fund-raising croquet tournament with journalist George Plimpton.^[1]

Expeditions[link]

The experience taught him a lot about the fundraising value of publicity, so he set off to achieve several world records, cycling thousands of miles on several continents.^[1] The first trip, called "Americastrek," covered 15,500 miles from Alaska to Argentina and was completed in 1987; the second, "Sovietrek," in 1990 covered 12,888 miles; the third, inspired by 1992's Los Angeles riots, was "Africatrek," covering 11,885 miles through Africa.^[6] Buettner has completed these treks in spite of suffering from Ménière's disease.

In February 1995, he and a team including Mayanist Julie Acuff, photographer Douglas Mason, and his two brothers, Steve and Nick, embarked on a three-month, 3,244-mile mountain bicycling expedition known as MayaQuest. They travelled through Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras to gain insights into the causes of the collapse of the Maya civilization around A.D. 900. Carrying laptop computers and a minisatellite dish on loan from Rockwell, these adventurers were able to link up with 40,000 schools involved in the project via Prodigy, as well as other Internet users. The team logged on twice a week, uploaded their findings, fielded questions from students and teachers, and received input from more than one million online participants.

Buettner first utilized the internet in publicizing his adventures on the last of these trips, as he and his companions posted on Mosaic the details.^[7] The last of these trips also became the subject of an Emmy-winning PBS documentary co-produced by Buettner and a book he authored, Afratrek: A Journey by Bicycle through Africa, which won the Young Reader Award of Scientific American.^[6]

Activities in Support of Classroom Education[link]

In 1993, Buettner first began transmitting videos and stories from his expeditions into classrooms and in 1995 founded "Earthtreks, Inc." to support that effort.^[6] He sold the company to textbook publisher Classroom Connect in 1997, but continued to lead expeditions until 2004.

His Africatrek and MayaQuest were adapted into educational computer games by MECC in the late 90s.

Blue zone research[link]

During his bicycling trips, Buettner became interested in demographics and longevity and began his research into "blue zones,"^[8] his term for the regions on Earth with the longest life expectancy, disability-free life expectancy or concentration of persons over 100,^[1] He began investigating these "blue zones" with physicians and demographers, focusing his initial efforts in Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan;, Monterrey, Nuevo Leon and Loma Linda, California.^[8]

Buettner reported his interest in "blue zones" in his cover story for National Geographic Magazine's November 2005 edition, "Secrets of Longevity."^[1][9] When Costa Rican demographer Dr. Luis Rosero-Bixby revealed in 2005 that Costa Ricans who survive to the age of 60 "have the longest life expectancy of anyone in the world," National Geographic funded an expedition led by Buettner to investigate.^[5] Buettner's expedition confirmed Rosero-Bixby's findings and discovered further that in the specific region of Nicoya, in the northwestern part of Costa Rica, residents were longer-lived even than other Costa Ricans, making it the "blue zone" of the Americas.^[5]

In April 2008, Buettner released a book on his findings, The Blue Zone: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest, through National Geographic Books.

Quest Network, Inc[link]

Following his association with Earthtreks, Buettner founded a new company, Quest Network, Inc., to carry on his educational goals, beginning with his 2005 "blue zone" exploration of Okinawa, Japan.^[7] His next Quest Network project covered his return visit to Nicoya in early 2007.^[10] Quest Network's interactive classroom experiences allow students worldwide to vote on upcoming activities of the expedition team.^[1]

References[link]

Select bibliography[link]

• Buettner, Dan (2011). Thrive. Finding happiness the Blue Zones way. National Geographic Books. ISBN 978-1-4262-0818-8. 
• Buettner, Dan (April, 1997). Africatrek: A Journey by Bicycle Through Africa. Lerner Publishing Group. ISBN 0-8225-2951-3. 
• Buettner, Dan (April, 2008). The Blue Zone: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest. National Geographic Books. ISBN 1-4262-0274-1. 
• Buettner, Dan; Douglas Mason (illustrator) (May, 1996). Maya Quest: Interactive Expedition. Onion Press. ISBN 0-9640334-2-9. 
• Buettner, Dan (August, 1994). Sovietrek: A Journey by Bicycle Across Russia. Lerner Publishing Group. ISBN 0-8225-2950-5. 

External links[link]

• Blue Zones website founded by Dan Buettner