Who is the most important figure in the last 100 years?

Tyrann Mathieu.

 

The point though was we live in a different world now because of him, and may he burn in hell for it.

 

I'm gonna go with HITLER. Set in motion the cold war, from whence most of our lifetimes were impacted.

 

Michael Jordan

 

Hitler was a bump in the road. The real significant happening in the 20th century was the Bolshivik revolution and Lenin's ascent to power. It preceded and survived Hitler. The clash of ideologies that sprang from that defined the century. More than Hitler WWI set the table.

 

A few decades from now the obvious answer could be Watson and Crick, the co-discoverers of DNA structure. We may right now be at the biological equivalent of the printed circuit.

 

If Hitler had not been a threat, the Russians would still be trying to figure out which end of the donkey was best.

 

Lots of greatness posted in this thread both good and evil. When this thread was first created my initial first thoughts were Henry Ford and Bill Gates.

Ford gave America affordable transportation which made us a mobile society. Roads, streets highways and bridges had to be built, putting millions to work. People no longer had to live within walking distance or horseback distance from their jobs. Outlying areas began to become populated, leading to subdivisions and new towns. Trucks were needed to transport goods to people not living in cities and goods manufactured in one city could be transported to other places. Before long General Motors and Chrysler copied Fords assembly line manufacturing techniques and a great industry was born.

Bill Gates gave us affordable personal computing. Who in 1980 ever thought they would actually own a computer?
Now they are part of our daily lives and we can't do without them. Honorable mention goes to Steve Jobs but his business model of charging high prices for quality machines would never have sparked the mass buying of computers. Yes, Jobs stole the graphical interface from Xerox which was in turn stolen from Jobs by Gates and Paul Allen but in a stroke of genius when IBM offered to buy the Disk Operating System Gates he told them he wouldn't sell it but would license it to them. He retained owership of a product he could recreate for nothing over and over and over again and sell it. Not only did he have the geek skills to create what he did, Gates turned out to be a great businessman also. A rare quality in a techie.

 

Margarate Sanger ---- she is the woman who underwrote the development of "the pill" ... ushering in the sexual revolution that was the reason all you smucks got laid and didn't have to worry about a shotgun wedding.