Western Culture Global Presents

The Top 100 Heroes of Western Culture by Category

The categories below are interrelated and, consequently, many individuals could be placed under more than one category. However, we have placed each individual in that category in which they made the most direct contribution.


Knowledge
These individuals are most responsible for replacing ignorance with knowledge -- knowledge that would often be critical in allowing others to make important contributions in the other categories below (civilization, health, liberty and abundance).

Aristotle
Thales
Galileo Galilei
Isaac Newton
Thomas Aquinas
Nicolaus Copernicus
Averroes
Adam Smith
Roger Bacon
Johannes Kepler
Euclid
Herodotus
Albertus Magnus
Francis Bacon
Thucydides
William of Occam
Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek
Alhazen
Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius
Robert Grosseteste
Robert Boyle
Leonardo Da Vinci
Vittorino da Feltre
James Clerk Maxwell
Michael Faraday
William Gilbert
Archimedes
Antoine Lavoisier
Plato
Ptolemy
David Ricardo
Johannes Gutenberg
Gregor Mendel
Demitri Mendeleyev
Charles Darwin
Hipparchus
Albert Einstein
Alfred Lothar Wegener
William Le Baron Jenney


Civilization
These individuals are most responsible for defending civilization and / or helping to spread advanced civilization to parts of the world where there was previously little or none.

Homer
Charlemagne
Petrarch
Christopher Columbus
Deng Xiaoping
Manmohan Singh
Ronald Reagan

Health
These individuals are most responsible for developing the science of medicine and / or directly saving the lives of large numbers of people.

Hippocrates
Louis Pasteur
Galen
Avicenna
Edward Jenner
Norman Borloug
Alexander Fleming
Fred Soper
Paracelsus
William Harvey
Long and Morton
Andreas Vesalius
Phillipe Pinel
Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis


Liberty
These individuals are most responsible for developing the theory of political and economic liberty and / or bringing it into practice.

John Locke
Thomas Jefferson
George Washington
Benjamin Franklin
Edward Coke
James Madison
Montesquieu
Thomas Paine
Denis Diderot
Voltaire
Mary Wollstonecraft
Martin Luther King

Abundance
These individuals are most responsible for creating abundance and consequently ending or alleviating poverty, making human life more secure and enjoyable. "Abundance" and "poverty" apply not only to the material realm but also to the spiritual realm, and consequently artists are included in this category.

Polyclitus, Myron and Praxiteles
Nikola Tesla
Henry Ford
Thomas Newcomen
Cyrus McCormick
James Watt
Thomas Edison
Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides
Michelangelo
J.P. Morgan
George Stephenson
John Rockefeller
Andrew Carnegie
Nikolaus Otto
Willis Haviland Carrier
Wright Brothers
Ludwig van Beethoven
Karl Benz
Jack Kilby
Frank Whittle
Alexander Graham Bell
Guillaume Dufay
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Rafael
Ray Kroc
William Shakespeare
Akio Morita
Sam Walton






Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — Home
Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — by Numerical Order
Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — by Century
Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — by Category