Who is the most influential person of the 18th century?

A century of revolutions, symphonies and steam engines, argued down to a single name.

1. 1
   Benjamin Franklin

   Shaped the century's science, its printing trade and the founding of a new republic.
2. 2
   George Washington

   Won the American war of independence and then handed power back, twice.
3. 3
   James Watt

   His improved steam engine set the Industrial Revolution's pace for a century.
4. 4
   Voltaire

   The Enlightenment's sharpest polemicist against censorship, torture and clerical power.
5. 5
   Adam Smith

   The Wealth of Nations founded economics as a subject in 1776.
6. 6
   Jean-Jacques Rousseau

   His writing on the social contract and on childhood reshaped politics and education.
7. 7
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

   Wrote more than six hundred works in thirty-five years and redefined every form he touched.
8. 8
   Immanuel Kant

   The Critique of Pure Reason split philosophy into before and after.
9. 9
   Catherine the Great

   Expanded Russia's borders and its court culture across thirty-four years on the throne.
10. 10
    Thomas Jefferson

    Wrote the Declaration of Independence at thirty-three.
11. 11
    Carl Linnaeus

    Invented the naming system that still organises every living species.
12. 12
    Antoine Lavoisier

    Named oxygen, killed the phlogiston theory and made chemistry quantitative.
13. 13
    Johann Sebastian Bach

    Left the century its deepest body of keyboard and choral music.
14. 14
    Edward Jenner

    Developed the smallpox vaccine and with it the whole idea of vaccination.
15. 15
    Mary Wollstonecraft

    A Vindication of the Rights of Woman put gender equality on the Enlightenment agenda.

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