Great Thinkers

Meet the great minds whose ideas have shaped the world — philosophers, scientists, artists, leaders, and revolutionaries whose thinking still matters today.

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184 thinkers
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Literature
Christopher Hitchens
1949 - 2011 · United Kingdom (later United States)
Christopher Hitchens was a British-American journalist, essayist, and writer. He was one of the most famous public intellectuals of the late 20th and early 21st…
Creative expression Critical thinking Ethical thinking Research skills +1
"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."
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Law
Cicero
106-43 BCE · Roman Republic (Italy)
Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman lawyer, statesman, philosopher, and writer. He is one of the most influential figures in the history of Western law…
Critical thinking Ethical thinking Creative expression Research skills +1
"The safety of the people shall be the highest law."
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Anthropology & Culture
Claude Lévi-Strauss
1908-2009 · Belgium / France
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009) was a Belgian-French anthropologist, one of the most influential social scientists of the twentieth century. He was born in Brussels to a…
Critical thinking Research skills Storytelling and narrative Scientific thinking +1
"The world began without man and will end without him."
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Mathematics
Claude Shannon
1916 - 2001 · United States
Claude Shannon was an American mathematician and engineer. He invented the field of information theory. His work made the digital age possible. Almost every technology…
Scientific thinking Problem solving Creative expression Research skills +1
"Information is the resolution of uncertainty."
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Economics
Claudia Goldin
1946-present · United States
Claudia Goldin is an American economist and economic historian. In 2023, she won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, becoming the first woman to win…
Critical thinking Research skills Scientific thinking Ethical thinking +1
"I have always thought of myself as a detective."
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Anthropology & Culture
Clifford Geertz
1926-2006 · United States
Clifford Geertz (1926-2006) was an American cultural anthropologist and one of the most influential social scientists of the twentieth century. He was born in San…
Research skills Critical thinking Cultural heritage and identity Storytelling and narrative +1
"Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun. I take culture to be those webs."
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Economics
Dambisa Moyo
born 1969 · Zambia
Dambisa Moyo is an economist and writer. She was born in 1969 in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, in southern Africa. She spent part of…
Critical thinking Problem solving Ethical thinking Research skills +1
"Aid has been, and continues to be, an unmitigated political, economic, and humanitarian disaster for most parts of the developing…"
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Language & Linguistics
David Crystal
born 1941 · United Kingdom
David Crystal is a British linguist. A linguist is a person who studies language in a careful, scientific way. Crystal was born in 1941 in…
Critical thinking Creative expression Research skills Cultural heritage and identity +1
"Language change is normal, continuous, and not something to be feared."
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Language & Linguistics
Deborah Tannen
b. 1945 · United States
Deborah Tannen (born 1945) is an American linguist who has become one of the most widely read scholars of how people talk to each other.…
Critical thinking Emotional intelligence Cultural heritage and identity Research skills +1
"Communication is a continual balancing act, juggling the conflicting needs for intimacy and independence."
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Chemistry
Dmitri Mendeleev
1834-1907 · Russia
Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834-1907) was a Russian chemist who devised the periodic table of the elements, one of the most important organising schemes in the…
Scientific thinking Critical thinking Research skills Cultural heritage and identity +1
"The elements, if arranged according to their atomic weights, exhibit an evident periodicity of properties."
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Chemistry
Dorothy Hodgkin
1910-1994 · United Kingdom
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin was an English chemist. She remains the only British woman ever to win a Nobel Prize in any of the sciences. She…
Scientific thinking Problem solving Research skills Ethical thinking +1
"I was captured for life by chemistry and by crystals."
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History
E.P. Thompson
1924-1993 · England, United Kingdom
E.P. Thompson (1924-1993) was a British historian, socialist activist, and peace campaigner. His full name was Edward Palmer Thompson. He was born in Oxford into…
Research skills Critical thinking Citizenship Cultural heritage and identity +1
"I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the obsolete hand-loom weaver, the utopian artisan and even…"
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Philosophy
Edmund Husserl
1859-1938 · Austria-Hungary / Germany
Edmund Husserl was a German philosopher. He is the founder of phenomenology, one of the most important schools of twentieth-century thought. He was born on…
Critical thinking Research skills Creative expression Ethical thinking +1
"To the things themselves."
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Anthropology & Culture
Eduardo Mondlane
1920-1969 · Mozambique (Portuguese East Africa)
Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane was a Mozambican anthropologist and revolutionary who founded FRELIMO, the movement that led Mozambique's independence struggle against Portugal. He was born in…
Ethical thinking Critical thinking Research skills Cultural heritage and identity +1
"We must build a society that is free from the exploitation of man by man."
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Literature
Edward Said
1935-2003 · Palestine / United States
Edward Wadie Said was a Palestinian-American literary critic, public intellectual, and music critic. He was one of the founders of postcolonial studies. He was born…
Critical thinking Cultural heritage and identity Ethical thinking Research skills +1
"The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories…"
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Politics
Elinor Ostrom
1933-2012 · United States
Elinor Ostrom (1933-2012) was an American political economist. She was born in Los Angeles and grew up during the Great Depression, a period of severe…
Environmental thinking Citizenship Systems thinking Financial literacy +1
"A lot of models in economics assume that human beings are fundamentally selfish. But the evidence shows that many people…"
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Mathematics
Emmy Noether
1882-1935 · Germany (later United States)
Emmy Noether was a German mathematician who changed how we understand algebra and physics. She was born in 1882 in Erlangen, Germany. Her father was…
Scientific thinking Critical thinking Problem solving Creative expression +1
"My methods are really methods of working and thinking; this is why they have crept in everywhere anonymously."
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History
Eric Hobsbawm
1917 - 2012 · Egypt / Austria / United Kingdom
Eric Hobsbawm was a British historian and one of the most influential historians of the 20th century. He wrote about the rise of capitalism, the…
Research skills Critical thinking Creative expression Ethical thinking +1
"The dustbin of history is humanity's largest receptacle."
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Economics
Esther Duflo
1972-present · France / United States
Esther Duflo is a French-American economist. In 2019 she became, at age 46, the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic…
Scientific thinking Ethical thinking Research skills Problem solving +1
"It is not the magnitude of the problem that determines whether we can do something about it."
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Mathematics
Euclid
c. 325 BCE - c. 265 BCE · Alexandria, Egypt (Hellenistic Greek world)
Euclid was a Greek mathematician who lived in Alexandria, in Egypt, around 300 BCE. He is sometimes called the 'father of geometry'. We know almost…
Scientific thinking Critical thinking Problem solving Research skills +1
"There is no royal road to geometry."
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Technology & Engineering
Fazlur Rahman Khan
1929-1982 · Bangladesh / United States
Fazlur Rahman Khan (1929-1982) was a Bangladeshi-American structural engineer whose innovations transformed how tall buildings are designed and made the modern generation of skyscrapers possible.…
Scientific thinking Creative expression Research skills Critical thinking +1
"The technical man must not be lost in his own technology. He must be able to appreciate life, and life…"
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Language & Linguistics
Ferdinand de Saussure
1857-1913 · Switzerland
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) was a Swiss linguist whose ideas about language changed how people study not only language but many other fields as well.…
Critical thinking Scientific thinking Cultural heritage and identity Research skills +1
"In language there are only differences."
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Literature
Flora Tristan
1803-1844 · France and Peru
Flora Tristan was a French-Peruvian writer and activist. She was one of the earliest voices to link women's liberation with workers' liberation. She was born…
Critical thinking Ethical thinking Cultural heritage and identity Research skills +1
"Workers, unite!"
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Medicine & Health
Florence Nightingale
1820-1910 · England, United Kingdom
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) was a British nurse, statistician, and public health reformer. She was born into a wealthy English family and received an unusually thorough…
Health literacy Research skills Scientific thinking Numeracy and mathematical thinking +1
"The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm."
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