Great question and great answers so far. I always liked Alexander Fleming (discoverer of penicillin, which has certainly saved millions of lives) but I suspect someone else would have found it relatively quickly if he hadn’t—although I’ve never looked into the details.
What about George Washington? He obviously wasn’t the intellectual leader of the early USA and its form of government (and should only get a fraction of the credit / blame for everything that followed), but my sense (?) is that he played a key political (leadership) and military role in the revolution. Perhaps more importantly, he voluntarily stepped down after two terms as president, when he was still very popular. This seems rare in history (before or after his time) and likely led to more stable governance since then not only in the USA but also around the world. Arguably the US is the world’s oldest continuous government and oldest democracy; the UK is tough to pin down, but I’d go with the Reform Act of 1832 if I had to pick a year when the House of Commons truly escaped from aristocratic influence.
Great question and great answers so far. I always liked Alexander Fleming (discoverer of penicillin, which has certainly saved millions of lives) but I suspect someone else would have found it relatively quickly if he hadn’t—although I’ve never looked into the details.
What about George Washington? He obviously wasn’t the intellectual leader of the early USA and its form of government (and should only get a fraction of the credit / blame for everything that followed), but my sense (?) is that he played a key political (leadership) and military role in the revolution. Perhaps more importantly, he voluntarily stepped down after two terms as president, when he was still very popular. This seems rare in history (before or after his time) and likely led to more stable governance since then not only in the USA but also around the world. Arguably the US is the world’s oldest continuous government and oldest democracy; the UK is tough to pin down, but I’d go with the Reform Act of 1832 if I had to pick a year when the House of Commons truly escaped from aristocratic influence.