Since childhood, I have dreamed of someday having a house with a portrait gallery, where I would hang portraits of people I greatly admire. Every time I’ve either moved or redecorated, I’ve thought about dedicating a wall to this, but I never really had that much wallspace to spare.
A short time ago, it dawned on me that I actually have an infinite amount of wall space! My wall space is called the World Wide Web. And the World Wide Web is better than a physical wall, because the images are readily available (as opposed to hiding away in antique shops), and it’s easy to put things up and take things down, and you can share it with people you might not want to invite to your house.
So now I am prepared to unveil my World Wide Wall, or at least a first draft. I am well aware that many of these heroes are deeply flawed. I did not disqualify anyone for slaveholding, Louisiana purchases, Nazi sympathies or the imposition of protective tariffs. Not all of them are at the very top of their professions. The only criterion for inclusion was to make my heart go pit-a-pat.
My wall. Let me show you it. How many of these do you recognize? (No fair answering if you’re a personal friend who’s already seen an early draft of this.) And who would be on your wall?
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| 25 | 26 | 27 |
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| 28 | 29 | 30 |
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| 31 | 32 | 33 |
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| 34 | 35 | 36 |
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| 37 | 38 | 39 |
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| 40 | 41 | 42 |
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| 43 | 44 | 45 |
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| 46 | 47 | 48 |
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Who is No.1? He doesn’t have Socrates piggy eyes, and I can’t see you admiring either him or that other totalitarian philosopher Plato in any case. At least I hope not.
The beard is wrong for Aristotle. The face is wrong for Pythagoras.
Wait… Found it! Yes, I, even I would celebrate…
The only ones I can identify immediately are:
1. Archimedes
2. William Shakespeare
5. Galileo Galilei
7. Sir Isaac Newton
8. Benjamin Franklin
10. David Hume
11. Thomas Jefferson
15. Abraham Lincoln
23. Albert Einstein
26. The Marx Brothers (Groucho, Chico & Harpo?)
30. Sir Winston Churchill
37. Ronald Reagan
38. Milton Friedman
44. Margaret Thatcher
48. Clint Eastwood
53. Richard Dawkins
I’m probably showing my youth and my ignorance that I can’t identify more of them. I’m surprised to not see Adam Smith on your wall.
Of those I would personally include the following on my wall:
Archimedes
Galileo Galilei
Sir Isaac Newton
Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Jefferson
Abraham Lincoln
Albert Einstein
Sir Winston Churchill
Richard Dawkins
I need to give more thought as to who else belongs up there with them though.
Since you point out the kind of reasons you didn’t use to exclude, would you care to be more specific on the reasons you used to include. Ideally on a case by case basis.
Are you admiring Abraham Lincoln for overcoming his suicidal depression, his oration, or for fighting to preserve the Union? Benjamin Franklin for his ability to spin a yarn, tell a tall-tale, his diplomacy, or his inventiveness? Albert Einstein for his early work on fundamental physics, or for his later work promoting socialism and anti-nuclear weapon stance? Sir Isaac for his work on physics or for his work against counterfeiting (as warden of the Royal Mint).
Ben Alexander: As I said, the only real criterion was to make my heart go pit-a-pat. As far as further specifics—I can’t go into that without giving away the identities, which I’d rather not do unitl more people have had the fun of figuring out who’s who.
Expanding on Al’s List (many of which I believe I would have gotten)
13 Gauss
14 Bastiat
25 Bohr
27 Schrodinger
54 Dan Dennett
60 Steven Pinker
I’ll add
16 Harriet Tubman
33 Frederick Hayek
54 Daniel Dennett
Both 22 and 31 are irritatingly familiar…
4 Rene Descartes
12 David Ricardo
21 David Hilbert
24 Emmy Noether
31 Werner Heisenberg
42 Frank Sinatra
55 Jerry Garcia
56 Martin Scorsese
19 Maxwell
32 Dirac
Not sure: 39 Billy Wilder?
43 Robert Prseton
51 Robert Lucas
57 JJ Heckman
60 looks like David Simon, creator of “The Wire”.
Some names that might be on my wall are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feynman and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_stallman
I can’t help but note that out of the 60+ people who make your heart go pit-a-pat, only four are women. So I’m curious, what makes your heart go pit-a-pat that so few women possess?
Great list! But Steven Pinker and not David Friedman?! I would add:
1. Richard Feynman (most interesting physicist of 20th Cent.)
2. Orson Welles (greatest entertainer of the 20th Cent.)
3. Garry Kasparov (greatest chess player of the 20th Cent.)
4. Marilyn vos Savant (a genius, she wrote the best advice/puzzle column of 20th Cent.)
5. Richard Posner (greatest legal analyst of the 20th Cent.)
60 David Simon
My wall would have, among others:
Francis Bacon
John Locke
Voltaire
John Stuart Mill
Wilfrid Laurier
Oscar D. Skelton
Henri Bourassa
Harold Innis
Michael Bliss
Paul Martin, Jr.
J.L. Granatstein
John English
Most of these will be unknown, and many have significant faults.
You almost lost me at Sinatra, but you put up a young picture of the singer, so I’ll assume you like his early work when he could really sing.
Is 28 Lionel Barrymore?
David Pinto: 28 is not Lionel Barrymore. There is also one mis-idenitification among the earlier comments.
Is that 14? I was guessing that was David Ricardo (which makes me think the same thing as Al — Ricardo makes you go pit-a-pat but not Smith?)
whoops, nope, I’m out to lunch
The poets haven’t been identified yet.
17. Hopkins
19. Yeats
25. TS Eliot
38. Dylan Thomas
Also, 26 is Cole Porter. Is 15 mendeleev?
Steve Reilly, the numbers are below the pics, not above. Eliot is 28, and Thomas is 41.
Steve Reilly:
Is 15 mendeleev?
I assume you mean 18. In any case, the answer is no.
I think 27 is Gödel, not Schrödinger
I don’t think #33 is Hayek. The man in the picture parts his hair toward his left, whereas Hayek parted towards his right. And the man in picture has a prominent mole, whereas Hayek did not. However, I don’t know who the man in the picture really is.
I’m betting that Paul Samuelson and John Nash are in there, although I don’t recognize their pictures.
Not sure, but 18 may be Dostoyevsky.
After checking I’m pretty confident that 18 is Dostoyevsky. I think Gödel is nowhere in the gallery. 27 is most likely Schrödinger.
But wait a minute. Could 34 be Gödel? (Thought he died at younger age, but was actually 72)
One reason I like commenting on posts like this is that next year I can come back and see how much my ideas have changed.
Without looking at the previous comments, I have identified 24 for sure [counting the great Marx Brothers as one]; 6 more probables [they look vaguely similar to pictures I saw; or, in the case of Newton, I just can’t imagine that he’d be left out].
Without listing all those I recognize and admire: Galileo and Einstein, Franklin and Hume, Friedman [if that’s him] and Lucas give me the warmest feelings amongst the intellectuals. Somehow Newton leaves me cold; Hayek would be my fav. economist but I can’t find him. Otoh I certainly would not include Rousseau [if that’s him at #9]: I see better reasons even for the totalitarian Plato to be in my selection. I’d also leave out Dawkins and Dennett, as the only thing that I have read directly from Dawkins’ pen [on religion] is silly; and what I have read directly from Dennett [none of it on religion] is a mixed bag; but we can agree to disagree.
Starting from first principles, the first intellectuals that I would include are Aristotle, William of Ockham, David Hume, and Karl Popper [all of them also fine, if flawed, political intellectuals]. In addition: Sun Tzu, Niccolo’ Machiavelli, Hermann Grassmann, Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley [for coining the word “agnostic”], Edward Thorndike, Harold Black, Harold Jeffreys, Alan Turing, John von Neumann [who might be #36], Claude Shannon, Martin Seligman, and Nassim Taleb.
My criterion is similar to Steve’s: I listed the intellectuals whose work inspires the greatest awe in me. I could add the [other] writers of the non-fiction books that most influenced me, but I’ll leave that for another post. However, Angus Maddison and Brad DeLong deserve a special mention, for making me realize just how much the human condition has improved in the last 2 or 3 centuries, and how little it improved before then.
9. Leonhard Euler
33. Henri Cartan
WRT my previous comment: that “Newton leaves me cold” does not mean that I do not recognize his contributions.
Moving on to Steve’s fav. political leaders: fortunately we share, in Franklin, a hero who was flawless afaik. Churchill and Reagan also have my warmest admiration, whatever their flaws. I do not see anybody that i disapprove of, but I am slightly uncomfortable with Thatcher, because I suspect that she steered Britain more towards feudalism than towards capitalism [because of the outrageous rise in house prices]. Otoh Lincoln’s presidency also had unintended negative consequences.
In spite of slaveholding, judicial torture, and religious persecutions, I take Elizabeth I as the greatest woman leader in history to date. Other historical women I admire include Chinggis Khan’s mother, first wife, and daughter in law [by his 4th son].
My other political heroes include Cyrus, Themistocles, Arminius, Charles Martel, Chinggis Khan [controversially], Pitt the Elder, the Earl Grey, Toussaint Louverture, Red Cloud [after reading Steve’s post], Truman [greatest US president in my opinion, though I am closer to Reagan in philosophy], Henri Guisan, Mannerheim (Marshal of Finland), JJ Cowperthwaite, Lee Kuan Yew, and the recently deceased Yegor Gaidar. Better leave out leaders who are still active, since I don’t know what they are going to do next.
A few more heroes tomorrow and I’m finished.
And
35. Saunders Mac Lane
40. Samuel Eilenberg
I have to admit that I have identified them not from my knowledge of mathematics – which is far from being at the level required by this WWW – but from Google and Wikipedia:)
(response to Frozen Horse) Since I don’t know what he looks like, I’ll say that Schrödinger is #27, and is not #27.
Dan Anghel: How did you Google a picture?
My list, limited to scientists and mathematicians:
– Einstein
– Darwin
– Dawkins
– Pinker
– Gödel
– Newton
– Hawking
– Euclid
– Aristotle
– Mendel
I started by trying to make a complete list, and got so bogged down I had to throw it away.
Actually, could #1 be Euclid? It doesn’t look like any image of him that I’ve seen, but who else might it be? I can only think the alternatives are Aristotle, Archimedes, and Pythagoras, and Euclid makes the most sense.
@Steve Landsburg
I just typed “mathematicians” into Google Images and chose the large size option – I noticed the pictures you uploaded are large size – and found Saunders Mac Lane on the 4th page, 2nd row. His Wikipedia page links to Samuel Eilenberg. This mechanism is rather rudimentary but my first thought was how cool would be to actually be able to google a picture just by uploading it on a search engine:)
Apologies about my misnumberings above. I was posting from my iPhone, so of course modern technology is to blame entirely and it’s not my fault at all.
One more who doesn’t seem to have been identified so far: 55 is Jerry Garcia. (That’s 52 by the outdated Reillian counting system.)
Sorry, #1 is Archimedes. How Steve could pick Archimedes over Euclid is beyond me.
D’oh! Mr. Anghel was right about #33.
My own list would include Darwin, Adam Smith, CS Lewis, Eric Raymond, and Robert Heinlein in addition to many already posted on your wall.
No doubt, 17 is John Cleese.
21 is Poincare, I think.
@leah
seems like a list of heroes/role models to me.
gender identity being what it is, seems likely that a man would have more male heroes/role models than female.
if you are indeed female (as your name suggests) i would wager that your list would include a far higher proportion of female characters.
marie curie, i presume.
being the under-educated dolt that i am, i only recognized a handful.
my list would be much shorter and would include nikola tesla. i think he was in a rock band in the 80’s. im also a big fan of the guy who calculated the circumference of the earth using a couple of sticks way back in the day.
2: shakespeare
4. fermat
5. galilieo
7. newton
8. franklin
9. euler
10. hume
11. jefferson
12. ricardo
13. gauss
14. bastiat
15. lincoln
18. dostoevsky
19. maxwell
21. hilbert
22. yeats
23. einstein
24. noether (i think)
25. bohr
26. the marx brothers
27. shrodinger
28 eliot
30. churchill
31. heisenberg
32. dirac
37. reagan
38. friedman
41. dylan thomas
42 sinatra
44 thatcher
46 grothendieck
48 eastwood
51 solow (?)
53 dawkins
54 dennett
56 scorcese
59 pinker
#3 – John Donne (1572 – 31 March 1631) was a Jacobean metaphysical poet.
#6 – Pierre de Fermat (17 August 1601 – 12 January 1665) was a French lawyer at the Parlement of Toulouse, France, and an amateur mathematician who is given credit for early developments that led to modern calculus.
#20 – David Hilbert (January 23, 1862 – February 14, 1943) was a German mathematician, recognized as one of the most influential and universal mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
#22 (not #19) – William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature.
#19 – James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish theoretical physicist and mathematician. His most important achievement was classical electromagnetic theory, synthesizing all previous unrelated observations, experiments and equations of electricity, magnetism and even optics into a consistent theory.
#28 (not #25) – Thomas Stearns Eliot (September 26, 1888–January 4, 1965) was an Anglo/American poet, playwright, and literary critic, arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century.
#25 – Niels Henrik David Bohr (7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish physicist who made fundamental contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.
#46 – Alexander Grothendieck (born March 28, 1928 in Berlin, Germany) is considered one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century.
#47 – Sergio Leone (January 3, 1929 – April 30, 1989) was a legendary Italian film director, producer and screenwriter most associated with the “Spaghetti Western” genre.
#59 (not #60) – Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954 in Montreal, Quebec) is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and author of popular science.
A useful search tool you may not have heard of TinEye (http://www.tineye.com) is a reverse image search site.
‘So I’m curious, what makes your heart go pit-a-pat that so few women possess?’
Be careful answering that one, Steve. Remember what happened to Larry Summers at Harvard.
Some I think I know, but have a question mark after it. Many I just don’t know. And I’m confused at at least two choices (you don’t have to explain yourself to me, but from some of your writings, just surprised).
1. Galileo?
2. Shakespeare
3. John Donne?
4. Descarte
5. ?
6. ?
7. Newton
8. Franklin
9. Euler
10. ?
11. Jefferson
12. ?
13. Gauss
14. ?
15. Lincoln
16. Tubman
17. ?
18. ?
19. ?
20. ?
21. Hilbert
22. von Neumann?
23. Einstein
24. Bose?
25. ?
26. Marx brothers
27. ? (although, I recognize him)
28. ?
29. ?
30. Churchill
31. ?
32. ?
33. Hayek?
34. ?
35. ?
36. ?
37. Reagan (I’m shocked he’s on this wall)
38. Freedman (spelling?)
39. ?
40. ?
41. ?
42. ?
43. ?
44. Thatcher
45. ?
46. ?
47. ?
48. Eastwood
49. ?
50. ?
51. ?
52. ?
53. Dawkins?
54. ?
55. Garcia?
56. Scorcese (I’m shocked he’s on this wall)
57. ?
58. ?
59. Pinker
60. ?
Many choices with which I would heartily agree: Garcia. Sinatra, Leone, Eastwood, Scorcese would be a few of the less obvious ones. I would add Michael Oakeshott, Hunter S. Thompson, Ernest Hemingway, Jim Harrison, Tom McGuane, PJ O’Rourke, Jose Ortega y Gassett, Jimmy Stewart, Yvonne Chouinard, Frank Shorter, Adam Smith, Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay, Gerry Lopez, Brooks Robinson, Montaigne, and Jonathan Richman.
60- David Simon