Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press, is the most important
person of the millennium, a new book says. A pair of New Jersey journalist
couples spent years researching, arguing, and consulting scholars before
publishing 1,000 Years, 1,000 People: Ranking the Men and Women Who Shaped the
Millennium (Kodansha America). The Bible was the first book that rolled off the
press of Gutenberg, who made his invention in the mid-1400s.

Among notable religious figures near the top of the list were Martin Luther
(#3), the monk who challenged the power of the pope, and Thomas Aquinas (#8),
whose proofs of God’s existence became a cornerstone of faith.

Rounding out the list’s top 20 were Christopher Columbus (#2), Galileo
Galilei (#4), William Shakespeare (#5), Isaac Newton (#6), Charles Darwin (#7),
Leonardo da Vinci (#9), Ludwig van Beethoven (#10), John Locke (#11), Mohandas K.
Gandhi (#12), Michelangelo (#13), Karl Marx (#14), Sigmund Freud (#15), Napoleon
I (#16), Albert Einstein (#17), Nicholas Copernicus (#18), Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(#19), and Adolph Hitler (#20), who was voted the villain of the millennium.

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