Who should I choose?

Hello everyone, I have a project coming up in English that requires me to give an oral presentation on a historical person who has greatly effected modern society. The instructions are as follows,
"You will be giving an oral presentation on a historical figure who you believe to be the most influential on modern society today. This figure has to have been born before 1980, cannot be a religious figure, celebrity, or athlete. You must explain why the person you have chosen is the most influential to modern society, and point out what they accomplished or acted on that has made them so influential."
Not to difficult..............except finding said influential person. Today in class we all researched as many people as possible to make a list of people we would like to present on (There are 29 kids in that class, and we can't have the same person). It's not that I had a hard time finding influential people, I am struggling to choose one! I made sure I had 5 people that nobody else was thinking of presenting on. These are the 5
1. John Locke
2. Csar Nicholas II
3. Lee Harvey Oswald
4. Napoleon Bonaparte
5. Gavrilo Princip

Which of these people should I choose? I would love to hear your opinion on the matter or input, I have to decide by Wednesday.

 

Howard Walter Florey, OM, FRS, FRCP (24 September 1898 – 21 February 1968) was an Australian pharmacologist and pathologist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Sir Ernst Boris Chain and Sir Alexander Fleming for his role in the development of penicillin. He was appointed a life peer in February 1965 and became Baron Florey.

Although Fleming received most of the credit for the discovery of penicillin, it was Florey who carried out the first ever clinical trials in 1941 of penicillin at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford on the first patient, a constable from Oxford. The patient started to recover but subsequently died because Florey was unable, at that time, to make enough penicillin. It was Florey and Chain who actually made a useful and effective drug out of penicillin, after the task had been abandoned as too difficult.

Florey's discoveries, along with the discoveries of Alexander Fleming and Ernst Chain, are estimated to have saved over 200 million lives,[4] and he is consequently regarded by the Australian scientific and medical community as one of its greatest figures. Sir Robert Menzies, Australia's longest-serving Prime Minister, said, "In terms of world well-being, Florey was the most important man ever born in Australia".[

My Choice...

 

I'd go with the SOB who invented the smart phone. It's hard to go more than a few minutes without seeing one of the silly things.

 

John Locke.

 

Csar Nicholas was just the last in a long line of rulers who happened to be in power when the feudal system was ended by the Revolution. Am curious to know how LBJ changed the world. The assassination of Ferdinand just hastened the inevitable conflict that was WW1 and was not the cause. I would go with either Locke or Bonaparte as there is ' more meat on the bones to pick'. Always remember that neither of them changed the world single handedly and you have to look at the public, political and global mores of the time and their influences.

 

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Adolph Hitler. It's hard to over-estimate his influence on modern society. All the consequences of his Third Reich have yet to be played out. If he had died in infancy the world would have been a totally different place than it is now. I do believe he is THE most influential person on modern society!

 

Germany and other European countries were in chaos after the first world war with extreme right and left wing ideologies vying for power. Hitler was looking towards Spain's Franco and Italy's Mussolini as inspiration. He was the ' right man for the right time' and it would be difficult to find another Fascist with his charisma and appeal.

 

My mistake in saying Gavrilo Princip "caused" WW1, that is obviously not correct as toki pointed out. As for LBJ, his escalating of the situation in Vietnam, and passing the Civil Rights act of 1965 greatly influenced, I would argue every facet of life in America, but maybe not the world, so I think I'm counting out Oswald for sure. I think Napoleon is to broad for me to cover effectively without going on too many tangents as well.

 

From your list? Napoleon, all the way.

 

For Napoleon; you cover the Code Napoleon. Forget the wars, look at the legal legacy.

 

I am largely unfamiliar with his legal actions as ruler, I will look into that.

 

Napoleonic Code - Wikipedia

 

No mention of Churchill ?

Ron

 

"Joseph Gayetty is widely credited with being the inventor of modern commercially available toilet paper"

"The Thor was the first electric-powered washing machine. Introduced in 1908 by the Hurley Machine Company of Chicago, Illinois, the Thor washing machine was invented by Alva J. Fisher. "

"In 1901 powered vacuum cleaners using suction were invented independently by British engineer Hubert Cecil Booth and American inventor David T. Kenney. Booth also may have coined the word "vacuum cleaner"."

 

Then threre's the whole canned food thing.

I got the impression from the original post that he was looking for lesser known individuals but that leaves the question of how Nicholas and Napoleon made his list. It may indicate issues in the education system.

 

It looks like the 5 were chosen because he wanted "5 people that nobody else was thinking of presenting on". That being said, it is surprising that Napoleon had not already been chosen by someone else and this leads me to agree with your last sentence above. I'd be curious to know the full list of the persons being presented -- my guess would be it is heavily weighted towards post-1950, and primarily pop-culture/athletic figures.

 

Iwd

The chap who started this thread said "There are 29 kids in that class"

Perhaps they genuinely hadn't heard of Churchill ??????

Ron

ps
I was actually at the dinner mentioned in the attached pic

 

That would indicate a significant problem in the educational system, at least IMO. Of course that is a distinct possibility. I hope it's not the case though.