The Greatest Person of All-Time

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In the history of the human race who do you think has had the most positive influence on society? And why?

I will nominate Norman Borlaug. He developed food strains and which has increased farming capacity of a square acre to about 4 to 6 times its previous capacity, saving more than a billion people from starvation.

Those billion people immediately set out to make even more babies. Can he do another 4 to 6 times increase?

ruveyn

Further, have we any assurance that those billin + had a positive effect on society?

Nitpicking aside - would it not behoove us to delimit what may be seen as positively affecting society? Society meaning the earth as a whole, or one portion?


Or is this just to be one of those uncomfortable everybody spout reacting to no specific stimulus events?

Hm.. I was under the impression that we already have the capability to produce enough food to feed the world, and that for various reasons, mostly economic and political, the food just doesn't get to the starving people.

I do not, let me say, mean to carp.

You are to be commended for initiating a thread that is not obnoxious rant nor stupid sectarianism nor uninformed idiocy not paltry attempted wit.

Potential serious discussions are rare, every onde is valuable. But it would help keep it from devolving into one of the above if we had a clearer mandate.

Probably Aśoka the Great: The historicity of Jesus and Buddha are questionable and both never had to be in any situation of real power. But Aśoka was the ruler of one of the most powerful Empires of his day and yet never seemed to be corrupted.

After the Kalinga War, Aśoka learned from his ills and built a great, just and prosperous empire based on human dignity and love. Just by looking at his Edicts, one can see the great differences between him and earlier Sargon or Mentuhotep II or later Alexander or Qin Shi Huang.

L Ron Hubbard. Total no brainer

Really though... too many people to name one single person imho

There are many ways in which we can increase food production globally.

OpenOcean fish farming has enormous potential, the surface area of the ocean vastly outweighs the amount of arable land.

Terraforming has already begun in africa, ion antennias disperse cloud condensation nuclei to make atmospheric conditions more suitable for rainfall. The swiss company Metro got headlines after it the locality it was in produced rainfall 56 days out of the year when no rain was forcasted.

Norman Borlaug talked about the need for population control, however it seems that when countries become developed their domestic population stops having as many babies. Many developed countries have the problem of decreasing population. As counterintuitive as it sounds.

Currently the rate of population growth is about 1.2% annual for the entire globe. This figure is projected to drop over the next 30 years to around .8%.

So power is the criterion? So much for the inventor if the wheel.

moses for the 10 commandments or the author(s) who brought us moses with his 10 commandments.

The person who first picked up a burning stick and thought it would be a good idea to not only keep it burning, but figured out how to start it burning again if the fire should ever go out.

You can clear primordial forests for crops, keep predatory beasts away from your cave, stay warm when your mate is sleeping on the other side of the cave, and you can even cook with it, thus...

I'll vote for Awesomelyglorious.

With a user name like that, he must be the one.

Not meaning to sound overly pious here, but I'll go with Jesus Christ. I name him not because of my Christian upbringing, but I view him solely through the lens of a student of history. No other human being has had such far reaching influence on world history, for good or ill, right up to modern times. It matters little if you consider him to have been God incarnate, a prophet, holy man, or charlatan; he started something which turned the world on its head.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Ugg: Maker of Fire

Good choice!

Sorry, guys, but it was not Ugg. Ugg was third woman of Kot nik Pash of the Pinpin, who at the time lived in Syria. She was notable for undermining first woman Ilt and inventing a technique for preparing beer without chewing.

Fire comes from Uganda and the Lotam, and was domesticated by Chuknasam-Popo "He who pokes at beetles all day long". Most of the Lotam thought Chuk [as his family called him] rather a loser, but his brother Wekan-Maket "He who tracks wildebeest" was assistant war chief, and was able to win acceptance for fire.

I take it then that Chuknasam-Popo was a Homo Erectus?

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer