A hundred years of American life in one field: the lab, the pulpit, the factory floor, the cockpit and the bandstand.
1Martin Luther King Jr.The minister whose campaign of nonviolent protest broke segregation and won him the Nobel Peace Prize at 35.
2Franklin D. RooseveltThe four-term president who rebuilt the economy with the New Deal and led the country through the Second World War.
3Theodore RooseveltThe president who opened the century by busting trusts, mediating a war and inventing the modern conservation movement.
4Neil ArmstrongThe Apollo 11 commander and first person to walk on the Moon.
5Henry FordThe industrialist whose moving assembly line put cars — and mass production itself — within reach of ordinary wages.
6Rosa ParksThe Montgomery seamstress whose refusal to move started the bus boycott that launched the civil rights movement.
7Albert EinsteinThe physicist who reshaped our picture of space and time and spent his last decades as an American citizen.
8Jonas SalkThe virologist who developed the first effective polio vaccine and refused to patent it.
9Muhammad AliThe three-time heavyweight champion whose refusal of the draft made him a political figure as much as an athlete.
10Thomas EdisonThe inventor whose Menlo Park laboratory turned invention itself into an industrial process.
11Eleanor RooseveltThe First Lady who redefined the role and then drove the Universal Declaration of Human Rights through the UN.
12Louis ArmstrongThe trumpeter and singer who turned jazz improvisation into a soloist's art and exported it worldwide.
13Jackie RobinsonThe Dodgers infielder who broke baseball's colour line in 1947 under national scrutiny.
14Dwight D. EisenhowerSupreme Allied Commander in Europe and then a two-term president of unusual public trust.
15The Wright BrothersThe Ohio bicycle makers who solved controlled powered flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903.
Comments 1
President for the century's first decade and dead by 1919, he is measured here against a polio vaccine, a moon landing and Rosa Parks: https://youpick.best/articles/theodore-roosevelt-ranked-many-ways
YP
ypb-teamAug 21
