Who is the most influential person of the 18th century?
A century of revolutions, symphonies and steam engines, argued down to a single name.
1Benjamin Franklin
Shaped the century's science, its printing trade and the founding of a new republic.
2George Washington
Won the American war of independence and then handed power back, twice.
3James Watt
His improved steam engine set the Industrial Revolution's pace for a century.
4Voltaire
The Enlightenment's sharpest polemicist against censorship, torture and clerical power.
5Adam Smith
The Wealth of Nations founded economics as a subject in 1776.
6Jean-Jacques Rousseau
His writing on the social contract and on childhood reshaped politics and education.
7Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wrote more than six hundred works in thirty-five years and redefined every form he touched.
8Immanuel Kant
The Critique of Pure Reason split philosophy into before and after.
9Catherine the Great
Expanded Russia's borders and its court culture across thirty-four years on the throne.
10Thomas Jefferson
Wrote the Declaration of Independence at thirty-three.
11Carl Linnaeus
Invented the naming system that still organises every living species.
12Antoine Lavoisier
Named oxygen, killed the phlogiston theory and made chemistry quantitative.
13Johann Sebastian Bach
Left the century its deepest body of keyboard and choral music.
14Edward Jenner
Developed the smallpox vaccine and with it the whole idea of vaccination.
15Mary Wollstonecraft
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman put gender equality on the Enlightenment agenda.
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