Top 10 People Who Changed Everything This Century
#10: Mark Zuckerberg
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Facebook originally began as an insular online community for college students. Twenty years later, it’s the biggest social networking platform in the world, and everyone and their grandma is on it. Mark Zuckerberg is the entrepreneur and philanthropist behind Meta Platforms, the parent company behind Facebook, which later acquired Instagram and WhatsApp. With his eye on building a virtual and augmented reality network called the “metaverse,” he’s come a long way, and has ambitions to go even further. Despite his success, Meta has been embroiled in lawsuits concerning web privacy and data security. These are issues that will only be more relevant as we continue to live out our lives on the Internet.
#9: Katalin Karikó & Drew Weissman
It’s almost hard to believe even now how precarious life felt during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.While there are people we will never hear about who were also working toward a vaccine, it was Penn State’s Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman who made it possible. Karikó is a biochemist, while Weissman is an immunologist, and together, their research brought about a breakthrough in messenger RNA-assisted vaccines that once seemed like a pipe dream. Their awards and accolades include the renowned Nobel Prize, and their work significantly stalled the progress of the pandemic, saved untold millions of lives and could have tremendous import for other illnesses.
#8: Sergey Brin & Larry Page
It’s not always invention that makes an impact. It’s reinvention. Google, of course, was not the first search engine, but these two classmates at Stanford University brought about an information revolution. Co-founding the leading search engine, Sergey Brin and Larry Page developed a new algorithm that had the ability to rank pages in order of relevance. Again, while this wasn’t totally new, what set Google apart was that it culled together the best of its competitive search engines and then left them in the dust. By 2004, “Google” itself had become a verb, and acquisitions of moneymakers like Android and YouTube bolstered its unbelievably broad influence. Brin and Page’s brainchild has since netted them top spots on the list of the world’s richest and most influential people.
#7: Xi Jinping
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China has massive global ambition and import, and Xi Jinping is at its head. Holding the office of president, military chairman, and the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping has consolidated enormous power. Often compared to former Chairman Mao Zedong, Xi has worked to recentralize power around himself as paramount leader. He’s overseen the constitutional amendment that removed presidential term limits. Xi has been criticized internationally for intense censorship practices, institutionalized hostility toward religious minorities, and continued aggression in international relations. These policies are already coming into play in major global conflicts and territorial disputes.
#6: Jeff Bezos
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Amazon, Inc. began as a piddly little Internet bookseller in a garage in Bellevue, Washington. By the year 2020, founder Jeff Bezos had overseen its expansion into areas as far-flung as film and TV production, cloud computing, and AI. Amazon’s massive warehouses dot the landscape from sea to shining sea, and made one-day delivery the standard by which all other e-commerce companies compete. Bezos’ success and Amazon’s growth are miraculous, but both he and the company have been criticized by anti-monopoly and labor activists. Sharp criticism directed at its data collection, its opposition toward unions, and its environmental impact haven’t slowed it down. Bezos stepped down as CEO in 2021, but his legacy lives on in Amazon’s near-ubiquity among consumers.
#5: Steve Jobs
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Few people have affected the minutiae of everyday life in the current century quite like Apple’s co-founder and longtime public face. Steve Jobs’ true innovation was the iPhone. Though not the first smartphone, the iPhone set the standard. Under Jobs’ leadership, Apple transformed a device that was still largely a status symbol and gave it mass appeal, improved software, and a competitive price tag. Apple has become a global colossus, the most-valuable company in the world. From what’s in our pockets to the way we think, work, and communicate with each other, Jobs and the company he co-founded revolutionized connectivity in the digital world.
#4: Vladimir Putin
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In the aftermath of the Cold War, Russia experienced a kind of identity crisis as it tried to compete in the world of globalized capitalism. Ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin eventually became acting president as the century turned, and has been the president or prime minister of Russia in the years since. His tenure has been denounced both at home and abroad for his authoritarianism, including the brutal and illegal war on Ukraine. Shrouded by corruption and myriad human rights violations, Putin’s Russia is still chasing the purported glory days of the Soviet Union.
#3: Elon Musk
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To some, he’s a genius of innovation. To others, he’s an egotistical radical right-wing buffoon. His polarizing views on the COVID-19 pandemic and other social issues, along with his acquisition of Twitter, have made him the target of skepticism and controversy. There’s no denying, though, that the world’s richest man is ambitious. Born into an affluent South African family, Elon Musk embarked on a series of entrepreneurial endeavors before striking it big with PayPal. From then on, he founded, co-founded, and simply took over several technologically innovative companies. From satellites to electric vehicles to accelerating the growth of artificial intelligence, Musk has his hand in virtually every burgeoning industry you can think of.
#2: Osama bin Laden
Many had heard the al-Qaeda leader’s name before September 11, 2001. He had been on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list since 1999, after his involvement with the bombings of American embassies in East Africa the year before. Few would forget him after he was revealed as the mastermind behind the hijackings and mass killings of 9/11. A ten-year manhunt ensued, ending with his death during a raid in Pakistan in 2011. Even as late as 2023, this terrorist’s writings went viral on social media as a result of war in the Middle East. Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions. Narendra Modi The Controversial Prime Minister Has Propelled India’s Shift to the Political Right Pope Francis This Pontiff Has Championed a Surprisingly Relatively Progressive Agenda Rupert Murdoch This Media Mogul Has Made Billions By Debasing Journalism and Exploiting Division Angela Merkel Germany’s First Female Chancellor Steered the EU Through the Global Financial Crisis
#1: George W. Bush
The 43rd president’s original claim to political relevance was his name and his tenure as governor of Texas. Then he became President, and 9/11 followed soon after. Terrorism became an everyday threat. The Bush administration’s Patriot Act chipped away at privacy in the name of defense. Vice President Dick Cheney and others in his administration may have also been the architects, but Bush became the public face of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While successors Barack Obama and Donald Trump also have been hugely influential (for wildly divergent reasons), the conflicts of George W. Bush’s tenure still impact America and the world. Which influential figure were you shocked didn’t make the list? Let us know in the comments.
