Who contributed the most to modern life?

Question

Which individual from History do you think contributed most to life as we know it know?
i think the person is Alexander the Great -
what do you think?

Answer 1

Hands down, no debate:

Johannes Guttenberg.

Without the printing press and the written word being available to the masses NONE of the modern world would exist.

Answer 2

Alan Mathison Turing, OBE (June 23, 1912 – June 7, 1954), was an English mathematician, logician, and cryptographer.

Turing is often considered to be the father of modern computer science. Turing provided an influential formalisation of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, formulating the now widely accepted "Turing" version of the Church–Turing thesis, namely that any practical computing model has either the equivalent or a subset of the capabilities of a Turing machine. With the Turing test, he made a significant and characteristically provocative contribution to the debate regarding artificial intelligence: whether it will ever be possible to say that a machine is conscious and can think. He later worked at the National Physical Laboratory, creating one of the first designs for a stored-program computer, although it was never actually built. In 1947 he moved to the University of Manchester to work, largely on software, on the Manchester Mark I, then emerging as one of the world's earliest true computers.

During the Second World War, Turing worked at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre, and was for a time head of Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. He devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers, including the method of the bombe, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine.

In 1952, Turing was convicted of "acts of gross indecency" after admitting to a sexual relationship with a man in Manchester. He was placed on probation and required to undergo hormone therapy. Turing died after eating an apple laced with cyanide in 1954, 16 days short of his 42nd birthday. His death was ruled as suicide.

Answer 3

Sir Isaac Newton. What makes modern life different from all other periods is the technology that arose from science. Newton made the greatest contribution in the development of science.

Answer 4

I'm going to have to say Rome as a society. I know it's not an individual, but I think over the whole, Rome did the most.

Answer 5

Plato. he once drew lines in the sand and told his students he didn't know what they meant, but that he was convinced someday these lines would be important. Plato conceived of bar codes thousands of years ago.

Answer 6

Schick and Shockley - the inventors of the transistor.

Answer 7

The Zig-Zag man.

Answer 8

hmmm... chirs columbus. if it wasnt for him, america would be a totally different place. im aware that he landed in the bahamas, but if he never went, no one would have tried as well and who knows, maybe our country may had never been found.

Answer 9

Thomas Edison without him there would be no Monday night football, microwaves, cell phones, and black lights ;-)

Answer 10

The guy who invented the wheel.