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From revolutionary leaders to scientific geniuses, they changed the world forever... Join us as we count down our picks for the most remarkable individuals who've ever lived! Our list celebrates those who transformed humanity through their courage, intellect, and compassion - but excludes religious figures to focus on historical impact.
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00:00Cyrus was a very innovative builder and I might add that his standards were particularly high.
00:08Welcome to WatchMojo and today we're counting down our picks for the greatest human beings
00:12who have ever walked the earth. For this list we will be shying away from religious and biblical
00:16figures. Instead we'll be focused on remarkable individuals from throughout history. Outside of
00:21the scientific community no one had even heard of Albert Einstein let alone his bizarre theories.
00:27Now the public learns that everything they believe about the universe is wrong.
00:3310. Florence Nightingale
00:35I knew that being a wife and mother would never be enough.
00:39I had this idea that I would do something with my life and I wouldn't let it go.
00:46Known as the Lady with the Lamp, Florence Nightingale is the mother of modern nursing. On the front line
00:51she was horrified by the unsanitary conditions of military hospitals during the Crimean War.
00:56She took charge introducing rigorous hygiene practices and patient care standards. Death
01:00rates plummeted. She then took her expertise beyond the battlefield. Nightingale founded the
01:04world's first secular nursing school. Then she fought for public health reforms that rippled
01:08across the world. Nightingale didn't just tend to the sick, she transformed nursing into a respected
01:13profession. She was proof that compassion and science could work hand in hand to save lives on a
01:17massive scale. Her legacy is so enduring that International Nurses Day is celebrated on her
01:21birthday. I am more interested in tending to the living, Dr. Mayes. Only God can help the dying.
01:26Quiet, quiet. Now I am naturally under your orders, so when you want us, my nurses are at your service.
01:329. Martin Luther King Jr.
01:34Well, this is a terrible thing. I've been in many demonstrations all across the South, but I can
01:41say that I have never seen, even in Mississippi and Alabama, mobs as hostile and as hate-filled as I've
01:49seen in Chicago. He was armed with nothing but his voice, his faith and his unshakable resolve.
01:54Martin Luther King Jr. was the face and the conscience of the American Civil Rights Movement.
01:58Preaching non-violent resistance, he organized marches, boycotts, and sit-ins challenging the deep
02:03injustices of segregation. His leadership helped secure the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He also played a
02:08key role in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King's speeches, especially I Have a Dream, gave moral
02:14clarity to generations of young people. They remain some of the most powerful words ever spoken. His
02:19life was cut short by assassination, but his legacy as a champion of equality and justice continues to
02:24inspire. But we must march. We must stand up. We must make a massive demonstration of our moral certainty.
02:32Number eight, Nelson Mandela. We're fighting the principle of fighting white domination.
02:40And in the course of that struggle, we can even form friendships with people from the other side.
02:46Few leaders embody resilience like Nelson Mandela. A lawyer turned activist, he became the
02:51face of South Africa's struggle against apartheid. For his efforts, he spent 27 years in prison.
02:56Mandela refused to compromise his principles even when freedom was offered in exchange for silence.
03:00When finally released in 1990, Mandela's moral authority was undeniable. He led negotiations that
03:06dismantled apartheid. In 1994, he became South Africa's first black president.
03:11I, Nelson Odessa of Mandela, do hereby serve to be faithful to the Republic of South Africa.
03:25So help me go.
03:27Rather than seek vengeance, he embraced reconciliation. He pushed for national
03:30unity and championed forgiveness as a path to healing. Mandela's courage and leadership earned
03:35him the Nobel Peace Prize. He endures as one of history's greatest symbols of justice and human
03:39dignity.
03:507. Marie Curie
03:52Marie Curie's brilliance literally lit up the scientific world. A pioneering physicist and
04:05chemist, she discovered the elements polonium and radium. Oh, and she just so happened to
04:09coin the term radioactivity along the way. Her groundbreaking work earned her two Nobel
04:13prizes, one in physics and another in chemistry. She was the first person ever to win in two different
04:18fields. Curie's discoveries revolutionized science. Yes, but more importantly, they laid the foundation
04:23for life-saving medical advances like x-rays and cancer treatments.
04:26Marie becomes the first woman in history to be awarded a doctorate in physics.
04:32The existence of radium is at last demonstrated, and Marie defines its atomic mass.
04:37Her relentless pursuit of knowledge came at great personal cost. Years of exposure to radiation led
04:42to her passing in 1934. Curie was a trailblazer. Her achievements shattered barriers for women in
04:47science and changed the world forever. She worked on something that was relatively obscure and turned
04:54it into a blockbuster. New elements, new properties, and a whole new way to look at the world.
05:01Charles Darwin wrote a book, and with it he wrote humanity's place in the world. Years of research
05:22and his famous voyage aboard the HMS Beagle led to an epiphany, the theory of evolution by natural
05:27selection. On the origin of species shook the foundations of science, religion, and philosophy
05:32alike. Darwin's idea that species adapt and change over time through natural selection,
05:37often summed up as survival of the fittest, is now the bedrock of modern biology.
05:41We find in South America three birds which use their wings for other purposes besides flight.
05:49The penguin as fins, the steamer as paddles,
05:54and the ostrich as sails. Though controversial in his day,
06:00his theory unified the life sciences. It opened entirely new fields of study. From medicine to
06:05genetics, his impact can be felt everywhere. Few individuals so thoroughly transformed how we
06:10understand life itself. Darwin's bold idea was that species come from other species just as naturally as
06:18children come from parents. There was a word for this kind of thinking. Heresy.
06:26Number five, Leonardo da Vinci. He's sort of feeling his way into a field that had never been illustrated
06:32before. Leonardo's groundbreaking dissections certainly informed his art. Leonardo da Vinci was quite
06:40possibly the most gifted polymath in history. We know him for artistic masterpieces like The Last
06:45Supper and Mona Lisa. But he was so much more. Engineer, inventor, anatomist. Da Vinci was a
06:50visionary centuries ahead of his time. His notebooks revealed designs for helicopters, tanks, and flying
06:55machines that wouldn't be built for hundreds of years. As an artist, he revolutionized realism with
07:00techniques like sfumato and chiaroscuro. It affected the younger artists. It affected his fellow artists.
07:05But they must have known there was a kind of force of nature in their presence. As a scientist,
07:11he dissected human bodies to map anatomy with unprecedented accuracy. Many of his inventions
07:16never left the page. True, but his relentless curiosity bridged art and science in ways that
07:20transformed both forever. Leonardo seemed to excel in every field. He truly embodied the archetype of
07:26the renaissance man. 4. Cyrus the Great
07:44Cyrus the Great founded the Persian Empire. Then he grew it into the largest the ancient world had ever
07:48seen. In the mid-6th century BCE, he conquered the Medes, the Lydians, and the mighty Babylonians. Persia
07:54stretched from the Mediterranean to Central Asia. Unlike many conquerors, Cyrus isn't remembered for
07:59who he destroyed, but for the kind of ruler he became. He respected local religions, customs,
08:03and governments, leading through loyalty instead of fear. After taking Babylon in 539 BCE, he famously
08:09freed the Jews from exile and allowed them to return to Jerusalem. His policies of tolerance and
08:13pragmatic leadership set a model that echoed through history. The Cyrus Cylinder is still hailed as the
08:18earliest declaration of human rights. Cyrus the Great is one of the few who deserves that epithet.
08:28The one who deserves to be called the Great. 3. Aristotle
08:31If Plato laid the foundation, Aristotle built the philosophical cathedral. A student of Plato and
08:36tutor to Alexander the Great, Aristotle became one of the most influential thinkers in history.
08:40He wrote on nearly everything, logic, biology, politics, ethics, and physics. For centuries,
08:54his works were considered the final word on how the world worked. Unlike Plato's focus on abstract
08:58ideals, Aristotle was obsessed with studying the tangible. He covered everything from classifying
09:03animals to dissecting governments. His emphasis on observation and categorization shaped Western
09:08thought for millennia. Though not always correct by modern standards, his system of thought provided
09:13a framework for how to think. Ironically, his influence is too widespread to be accurately catalogued.
09:18No field of thought escaped his grasp. The young man who had come to Athens more than 40 years
09:24earlier searching for knowledge had become an intellectual force in his own right.
09:292. Albert Einstein
09:31But understanding time is essential to understanding relativity. Now, I want you all to close your eyes.
09:40Not to worry, I don't bite. But I am on the lookout for a new pen.
09:45Few scientists have changed our understanding of reality as profoundly as Albert Einstein.
09:49In 1905, his Annus Mirabilis papers introduced breakthroughs on light, energy, and motion,
09:54including the now iconic equations E equals mc squared. How many other iconic equations can you think of?
10:00A decade later, his general theory of relativity redefined gravity itself, predicting phenomena like
10:05black holes and the warping of spacetime. In Einstein's universe then, if space were empty,
10:10it would be flat. There would be nothing going on. But as soon as you put objects down,
10:15they warp the space and time around them. And that causes a deviation of the geometry so that now things
10:23start moving. Einstein was also a public intellectual and humanitarian. He spoke against fascism,
10:28racism, and nuclear proliferation. He urged America to investigate atomic research during
10:33World War II, but later campaigned fiercely for peace. In 1921, he won the Nobel Prize for explaining
10:39the photoelectric effect, helping launch quantum theory. Equal parts scientist, activist, and cultural
10:44icon. Albert Einstein became the definitional genius. He could see in ways that no one else could. He put
10:51together elements of the universe that others had not imagined would fit together. The general theory of
10:58relativity is one of the greatest achievements of the human mind. Before we unveil our topic, here are
11:02some honorable mentions. Hypatia of Alexandria, a pioneering philosopher and mathematician,
11:07she became a lasting symbol of knowledge. Now I am actually saying this to everybody here in this
11:12room. More things unite us than divide us. Now whatever may be going on in the streets, we are
11:19brothers. We are brothers. Galileo Galilei, the astronomer who proved Earth orbits the sun, earning both
11:26fame and persecution. Galileo's downfall was not his inability to sway the church to his way of thinking,
11:33but rather his attempt at interpreting scripture all by himself, independent of the church.
11:40Joan of Arc, a peasant girl turned warrior saint, she led France to victory before her martyrdom.
12:02Mahatma Gandhi, he led India's independence movement through non-violent resistance.
12:14He began a fast in Kolkata, which he vowed to continue until the violence stopped.
12:24He refused to relinquish his vision of an India where the two communities could live in friendship
12:30and peace.
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12:46Number one, Isaac Newton.
12:48His grand project was to understand all God's secrets of the creation, of the forces that held the
12:55universe together, and of God's plans for the second coming of Christ and the return to pure
13:01Christianity. Gravity was only the beginning for Isaac Newton. In Principia Mathematica in 1687,
13:07he laid out the laws of motion and universal gravitation. His breakthroughs explained everything
13:11from falling apples to orbiting planets. His discoveries defined physics for more than two centuries,
13:16proving that the universe could be understood through math.
13:18By the early 1690s, after more than 20 years of research, Newton's alchemical experiments had
13:24yielded no scientific breakthroughs like those he'd made in math and physics.
13:29Newton also helped invent calculus, built the first practical reflecting telescope,
13:33and revolutionized optics. He helped unlock the mysteries of the heavens, reshaping how humanity
13:38thought about the universe around us. From science to philosophy, his influence set the stage for the
13:42modern world. Few individuals have left such a colossal imprint on knowledge.
13:47The problem for Newton was having anybody question what it was that he had done. He didn't
13:56want to tell anybody about it in the first place, but if he was forced to do it, you sure better believe
14:02what he said. Who do you think left the biggest impact on history? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
14:12Oh I
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