Great Thinkers

Below are some of the great thinkers whose bold ideas have brought us closer to finding answers to humanity’s greatest mysteries.

Scientists

• Physics
  • Albert Einstein – Special and General Relativity
  • John Wheeler – It from bit, participatory universe
  • Jacob Bekenstein – Bekenstein bound
  • Stephen Hawking – Black hole radiation
  • Leonard Susskind – String theory landscape, loop quantum gravity
  • Markus Müller – The origin of physical law
• Quantum Physics
  • Erwin Schrödinger – Schrödinger equation
  • Richard Feynman – Quantum Electrodynamics
  • Hugh Everett – Many-worlds
  • Heinz-Dieter Zeh – Many-minds, decoherence
  • David Deutsch – Designer of the quantum computer
• Astronomy
  • Carl Sagan – SETI, golden records, Arecibo transmission
• Cosmology
  • Martin Rees – Fine-tuned universe
  • Alan Guth – Inflation
  • Andrei Linde – Eternal inflation

Mathematicians

• Pythagoras – The world is mathematical
• Euclid – Axioms of geometry
• Georg Cantor – Different classes of infinity
• Bertrand Russell – Found and fixed flaws in set theory
• David Hilbert – Initiated program to lay foundations of mathematics
• Kurt Gödel – Proved no mathematical system is complete
• Alan Turing – Universal machines, halting problem, Turing test
• Gregory Chaitin – Algorithmic information theory
• Bruno Marchal – Discovered the many-worlds of arithmetic

Philosophers

• Metaphysics (Ontology / Existence)
  • Parmenides – Eternalism
  • Plato – Platonism
  • Plotinus – Neoplatonism, The One
  • George Berkeley – Idealism
  • David Lewis – Modal Realism
  • Max Tegmark – Mathematical universe hypothesis
• Ethics
  • Epicurus – Epicureanism
  • David Hume – Utilitarianism
  • Paul Harrison – World pantheist movement
  • David Pearce – Abolitionist project, transhumanism
  • Peter Singer – Effective altruism
• Philosophy of Mind (Consciousness)
  • René Descartes – Dualism, mechanism
  • Jerry Fodor – Modularity of mind
  • Daniel Dennett – Preposterousness of zombies
  • David Chalmers – The hard problem, fading qualia
  • Giulio Tononi – Integrated information theory
• Personal Identity
  • Arnold Zuboff – Universalism
  • Daniel Kolak – Open individualism

Theologians

• Zhuang Zhou – Taoist Philosopher
• Gautama Buddha – Founder of Buddhism
• Jinasena – Jain Philosopher
• Thomas Aquinas – Christian theology
• Fakhr al-Din al-Razi – Islamic theology
• Guru Nanak – Founder of Sikhism
• Baruch Spinoza – Rationalism
• Baháʼu’lláh – Founder of Baháʼí Faith
• Aldous Huxley – The Perennial Philosophy
• Pierre Teilhard de Chardin – The Omega Point
• Alan Watts – Scholar of Eastern religions
• Frank Tipler – The anthropic cosmological principle
• Tenzin Gyatso – Spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism

Engineers

• Claude Shannon – Information theory
• Heinz von Foerster – Cybernetics
• Marvin Minsky – AI, cognitive science
• Eric Drexler – Nanotechnology
• Danny Hillis – Recursive computer-driven improvement
• Hans Moravec – Simulation hypothesis, robotics
• Nick Bostrom – Simulation argument
• Ray Kurzweil – Law of accelerating returns
• Seth Lloyd – Physical limits of computation
• Jürgen Schmidhuber – AI Pioneer
• John Koza – The invention machine
• Russell Standish – Derivation of Occam’s razor
• John Smart – The transcension hypothesis

Polymaths

• Democritus – Atomic theory, primitive evolutionary ideas
• Aristotle – Logic, materialism, ethics
• Isaac Newton – Laws of motion, gravitation, calculus
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Calculus, binary, the calculator, ontology
• John von Neumann – The computer, game theory, quantum mechanics
• Hilary Putnam – Functionalism, four-dimensionalism, MRDP-theorem
• Freeman Dyson – QED, Project Orion, Dyson Sphere
• Raymond Smullyan – Mathematician, logician, philosopher
• Roger Penrose – Math, physics, cosmology, consciousness