Benjamin Franklin.
Ask HN: Whom do you admire most?
21–30 of 240 posts
Re: Ask HN: Whom do you admire most?
#22Jesus, because the world would be a better place if we were more like him.
Who is downvoting the man for his beliefs? grow up.
Re: Ask HN: Whom do you admire most?
#23Deng Xiaoping. In the pure utilitarian sense, he may have had the greatest positive impact of any person in the 20th century. In a century wracked by war between the ideologies, his philosophy was just the tonic the world needed: "Who cares if the mouse is black or white, as long it catches the mouse".
Re: Ask HN: Whom do you admire most?
#24Joss Whedon.
Because damn, Buffy was a brilliant show.
Re: Ask HN: Whom do you admire most?
#25My grandfather. You guys have probably never heard of him, but he rocked.
Growing up, my mom was basically the smartest person I knew, and it drove me to work harder. She had 2 annoying phrases that really pushed me.
"Tell me something I don't know"
"If that book is so good, why are you telling me about it instead of reading it?"
She was a great motivator.
Re: Ask HN: Whom do you admire most?
#26Yukichi Fukuzawa anyone?
His biography has been sitting on my shelf for a while, I really need to find time to read it.
Re: Ask HN: Whom do you admire most?
#27Isaac Newton - Newton's Laws, Theory of Gravity _and_ Calculus.
and
William Shakespeare - basically invented modern english.
Re: Ask HN: Whom do you admire most?
#28A few off the top of my head (most are self-explanatory):
Charles Darwin, Richard P. Feynman, J. Robert Oppenheimer, John Von Neuman, Paul Erdos, Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, Thomas Jefferson, Aubrey de Grey, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Douglas R. Hofstadter
Re: Ask HN: Whom do you admire most?
#29Joss Whedon. Because damn, Buffy was a brilliant show.
don't forget about Firefly
Re: Ask HN: Whom do you admire most?
#30Leo Szilard. Had the idea for fission chain reaction, realized what would happen if Hitler got hold of it, and kept his mouth shut... while browbeating the skeptical Fermi into starting the Manhattan Project, and ghostwriting Einstein's letter to Roosevelt. Right up there with Norman Borlaug and Stanislav Petrov on the list of people you've never heard of because CNN is too busy covering Michael Jackson.
I'll stick with Borlaug. I know singing his praise has become slightly cliched on this forum, but he very objectively deserves it. He's done more for humanity than anyone since whoever it was that discovered how to make fire.