Who in history (either present or in the past) do you think has had the biggest positive impact on humanity?

John Snow

For finally convincing westerners that microbes exist. Which got the ball rolling on like, actual medicine.

That's all.

He did, in fact, know something.
And it was quite important.
- (almost like the fictional character was named that for a reason--)
And killing the last of the dragons and stuff

Louis Pasteur?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur

His milk is so passé. Louis Microfilter has much better stuff these days
- But you need a subscription for it :p
I'm more a fan of Jonas Salk, Maurice Hilleman, Edward Jenner, Alexander Fleming

Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press.

I suspect that one is overrated, actually. He did one step in a long, gradual process. He gets credit mainly because it was big for Europe, who right at that moment in history invented proper seafaring and spread themselves and his name all over the place.
- Considering Europe did conquer the world (yes, including China), I'd say that's a pretty big deal...
But if you think the internet and social media as the continuation of that tradition - maybe that was a mistake after all. /s

Fritz Haber, the Veritasium video about him is fascinating (The Man who Killed Milioms and Saved Bilions). He developed the chemical process to efficiently synthesize ammonia, one of the key discoveries that allowed mass adoption of fertilizers and the incredibly rapid growth of the human population in the 20th century (you could say that thanks to him, bilions of people could live and be fed by modern agriculture).

Tragically, he also had a fundamental role in developing chemical weapons during WWI, although he belived their use would reduce the number of deaths as army would simply avoid gassed zones, so who knows if he really intended and believed in the milions of deaths he caused. Ironically, he also helped developing Zyklon B during the rise of nazism (while it was still used as a pesticide), but was quickly forced to flee from Germany because of jewish origin. Later, his last invention would be used to kill even more people.

There's also a Sabaton song, "Father", about him.
- That's where I first heard about him. Thanks, Spotify. I've learned more about European history from Sabaton and Iron Maiden than I have from school.
  Someone else mention Borlaug in this thread, and it shows how no single person necessarily changed anything on their own, and how it's difficult to put all the success as the result of a single person. Borlaug's success was only possible by building on Haber's work, just like Haber worked with Carl Bosch to accomplish what he did, and so on.
  Seven Billion Humans: The World Fritz Haber Made
  Haber therefore revolutionized the entire course of world history. The transformation of Asia and the emergence of China and India as giant, modern 21st-century global economies would never have been possible without Norman Borlaug’s miracle rice strains. But they could never have been grown had Haber not “extracted bread from air,” as his fellow Nobel laureate Max von Laue put it. Borlaug’s “miracle” strains of rice and grain require exceptionally vast inputs of the nitrate fertilizer that is still made from the process Fritz Haber discovered.
  These fertilizers also require enormous inputs of oil. This means the dream of an oil-free world can never happen. Even if eternal, ever-renewable free energy could be harnessed from the sun or the cosmic currents of space, a world of seven billion people would still be desperately dependent on oil to make the nitrate fertilizer to grow the crops those people need to survive. The 21st century, like the 20th century, therefore, will still be Fritz Haber’s world.

Norman borlaug and Fritz Haber. The first was basically the father of modern agriculture helping feed over a billion people. The latter known as the man that saved billions and killed millions, helped develop the haber bosch process that produces ammonia used in fertillizers that are responsible for feeding half the world's population. It was also used in explosives hence the "killed millions" part.

Is that the guy that discovered the gas used in the Holocaust?
- Zyklon b was used as a fumigant before it was used in the holocaust. It was also called Prussic acid and would be known as Hydrogen Cyanide today. It was discovered by Carl Scheele back in the 1700s. It is also what gives poisonous (bitter) almonds their characteristic scent and toxicity.
  Haber did however, suggest the use of Chlorine gas as a chemical weapon which his wife was so horrified by that she committed suicide. Haber was also partially responsible for the development of the Born Haber cycle which is a theoretical tool used to estimate the thermodynamic stability of salts.
  Haber is only listed here because ultimately billions would have starved to death without the Haber process. And regardless of his intentions and the other things he did, that particular invention arguably saved more lives than anyone else that has ever lived.

Louis Pasteur

Politicians and kings rarely do something they weren't forced to, and inventors are rarely without competition, so I take issue with most of the responses here.

Instead, I'll go with naval officer Vasily Arkhipov, who, if he had decided to agree with the normal officers of the submarine he happened to be on, would have started a hot Cold War on 27 October, 1962.

Then again, there was a separate, slightly less severe close call the same day, so if you butterfly that who knows what else happens. It was a crazy time where few understood nuclear diplomacy and cold warfare, but nukes were ubiquitous, and were being treated like normal weapons. We got lucky.

There was another noteworthy case with Stanislav Petrov.
- Yup. That one had a bit more wiggle room, though, because his superiors might have just come to the same conclusion he did. The other incident marked likely on the Wikipedia list is actually from France, which is almost funny to me. Can you imagine France doing a first strike out of nowhere?

Norman Borlaug. His agricultural innovations have saved literal billions of of lives from starvation and malnutrition.

I had never heard of him, thank you for showing me this

Who ever started the whole enlightenment thing, with the idea that there is no god and we are responsible for our self.

Who ever started the whole enlightenment
Highly debatable, but one argument could be made for Sultan Mehmed II, which would be a fairly ironic person to give the award to.
- Sultan Mehmed II
  That's the dude who fought Dracula? Didn't know he was involved with enlightenment any sources to read up on it?
You know, from what I've read about it, it wasn't one specific person, and it seems highly likely there were others doing the same thing earlier, but they just couldn't take root for whatever reason.
- What do you mean? It's always a specific person or a specific small group that comes up with ideas that are later popularized. Like you can pinpoint evolution theory to a small group of biologists with Darwin and Huxley at their forefront.
Religion died the day they invented the scientific method.
- Someone forgot to tell that to religions.
The enlightenment is overrated. History is driven by contestst of groups not contests of ideas.
- And people are often governed or motivated by ideas.
- As a counterpoint, may I submit: your own fucking username?

The Mitochondrial Eve.

Yeah my answer was "our Most Recent Common Ancestor"

Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman

I'll have to argue that Santos Dumont and others inventors did Open Source in the XIX.
- But compared to one of those. Who did the biggest impact?
  I dont know them and maybe they made a much greater impact.
- Yes. That Stallman is arguably one of the top few people why we have the internet as it is, at all today.
  Most other people could be "replaced". If it wasn't X, it would be Y. But only Stallman pushed the copyleft license onto Linux. Only Stallman's organization popularized it.
  So yes, that sexist, neurodivergent, bigoted Stallman, is one of the most positively influential people of our time.
- A person needn't be good in order to do good things, just as a good person doesn't necessarily impact the world positively simply by existing.

Norman Borlaug helped develop a lot of techniques used by developing nations to gain food self-sufficency.

Not just developing countries but the whole planet.

Mathematicians, Physicists, Scientists, and Astronomers: Good effort everyone. The foundation of a rational world.

Very Notable Mentions:

Chemist: Fritz Haber. 1/3 of world food production today can be attributed to his discovery. Also an enormous negative impact, see German Chemical Warfare.
Biologist: Gregor Mendel. Monk who discovered the basis for genetics.
Ecologist: Charles Darwin. Discovered the theory of evolution.
Philosopher: Socrates. Critical Thinking.
Computers: Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, and Alan Turing. See empowerment of computation and relegating ridiculously complex math and data collection to machines.
Computer Networking: J. C. R. Licklider, DARPA, and Tim Berners-Lee. See Internet and I/O on a global scale. Both positive and negative.
Finally, the largest net positive of all: Artists. Yes, artists. Popularity as the prime determinant by nature of their work. For inspiration, desire, meaning, peace, community, and emotion. The language of all, an instinctive form of communication.

My visual pick is Leonardo da Vinci as both a practical and artistic contributor. As for classical, it's nearly impossible to pick, but I'd say Beethoven and then Bach.

Eh, kind of 'rediscovered' more.
Biologist: Gregor Mendel. Monk who discovered the basis for genetics.
Sometimes children take after their grandparents instead, Or great-grandparents, bringing back the features of the dead. This is since parents carry elemental seeds inside – Many and various, mingled many ways – their bodies hide Seeds that are handed, parent to child, all down the family tree. Venus draws features from these out of her shifting lottery – Bringing back an ancestor’s look or voice or hair.
Indeed These characteristics are just as much the result of certain seed As are our faces, limbs and bodies. Females can arise From the paternal seed, just as the male offspring, likewise, Can be created from the mother’s flesh.
For to comprise A child requires a doubled seed – from father and from mother. And if the child resembles one more closely than the other, That parent gave the greater share – which you can plainly see Whichever gender – male or female – that the child may be."
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 4.1217-1232 (50 BCE)
Ecologist: Charles Darwin. Discovered the theory of evolution.
In the beginning, there were many freaks. Earth undertook Experiments - bizarrely put together, weird of look Hermaphrodites, partaking of both sexes, but neither; some Bereft of feet, or orphaned of their hands, and others dumb, Being devoid of mouth; and others yet, with no eyes, blind. Some had their limbs stuck to the body, tightly in a bind, And couldn't do anything, or move, and so could not evade Harm, or forage for bare necessities. And the Earth made Other kinds of monsters too, but in vain, since with each, Nature frowned upon their growth; they were not able to reach The flowering of adulthood, nor find food on which to feed, Nor be joined in the act of Venus.
For all creatures need Many different things, we realize, to multiply And to forge out the links of generations: a supply Of food, first, and a means for the engendering seed to flow Throughout the body and out of the lax limbs; and also so The female and the male can mate, a means they can employ In order to impart and to receive their mutual joy.
Then, many kinds of creatures must have vanished with no trace Because they could not reproduce or hammer out their race. For any beast you look upon that drinks life-giving air, Has either wits, or bravery, or fleetness of foot to spare, Ensuring its survival from its genesis to now.
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 5.837-859
Certainly the more modern versions of these ideas had the benefit of the scientific method to help flesh them out and gain traction as opposed to being rejected and forgotten by dogma.
But let's not be like the ancient Greeks in claiming Pythagoras invented ideas that we now know predated him by millennia. We owe a great deal to the giants on whose shoulders we stand on, but let us not forget the giants who tread the ground well before them and simply didn't get taken up on the offer of their shoulders.
- Lucretius, De Rerum Natura
  It appreciate the knowledge and poetry. Thank you.
  let us not forget the giants who tread the ground well before them and simply didn’t get taken up on the offer of their shoulders.
  Rather, let us not forget the people whose ideas reflected reality. Data and science are not speculation, "must haves", or attributions of unknown mechanisms to the favor of deities.
  Many people speculated on gravity, astronomy, and falling things long before someone put it into a mathematical formula. That is, quantitative and qualitative assertions outweigh ideological ones. I speculated with a sibling about black-holes being potential wormholes or portals several years before I read a news article saying Stephen Hawking speculated the same. Yet I provide no supporting evidence, written and dated or not, thus I am no giant.
Tim Berners-Lee is an excellent choice
I dont think evolution should be considered just a theory now,, its basically proven.
- Theory doesn't mean what people think it means.
  Culturally, we misunderstand theory to be equivalent to "hypothesis," meaning "We have an idea, now we need to prove or disprove it."
  But accurately, theory means "We have a framework of interrelated ideas that fit the observable evidence." In that sense, evolution is an EXTREMELY well supported theory.
  Gravity is also a theory. So are general and special relativity. So is all of quantum physics.
- In addition to what The Bard In Green said, while we know that evolution does happen, there is a lot of debate over what is its main driving force. Darwin argued that the main force was natural selection, and most biologists agree with him. But there are also other schools, such as Kimura's neutral theory (evolution is caused primarily by luck) and Margulis's symbiosis theory (evolution is caused primarily by mutualism).
Kinda settin the bar a little high here for Lemmy posts, ain'tcha?
- We're all here trying to make the place nicer. I think we're all contributing what we can to make the place what we want it to be.
  For me, I want a psychologically safe place where I can have fun, share my ideas, and learn something new. Especially learning interesting tidbits that can lead me down a rabbit hole of knowledge. So that's what I'm doing. Here's hoping a snagged a few people off to wonderland.

Whoever first domesticated fire. Whatever his name was, I forgot.

That was Ug. Really cool guy. His golf swing was immaculate, too.
- Every hole, a hole in one.
  And then his grandson invented the number two.
I'd bet fire was involved in his/her name. Either fire was named after the inventor or the inventor was named after fire.
John Fire
I mean, that could actually be many people for all we know. Back that far it's hard to even pin down the millennia something happened.
Fire domestication happened before our species even existed. Who ever did it, made us possible. Great answer.

-Sir Alexander Fleming (guy who discovered the anti-biotic properties of penicillin)

-Sir Isaac Newton or alternatively, Gottfried Leibniz (they both independently of one another invented Calculus roughly around the same time)

-Bill Watterson

Bill Watterson is up there

Dolly Parton

Bell Labs and the invention of the transistor.

It's absolutely mind blowing how many innovations came from Bell Labs.

James Clerk Maxwell. If it uses electricity then it's based on Maxwell's equations.

Also if it uses light!
Maxwell was an important contributor to the formalization of electromagnetism, yes, but just as much recognition should be given to Faraday for discovering the bloody thing exists in the first place.
He is not the one and only great physicist in history tho.

Lenin.

We're out here in full force.

my mother

I'm glad you were born, my dear. You are such a blessing!

The person who figured out how to make fire

I believe many great human beings have existed throughout history, but the impact they cause is often limited by their circumstances. For example, there have been thinkers defending compassion towards human beings and animals in possibly every culture, but those sages live and die admired yet misunderstood. Their lives are seen as "extraordinary", and thus, not attainable for normal people like us. We give up on following them since the start, instead of trying to achieve their wisdom or understanding...

Anyway, by mere impact, I guess Socrates, Plato, and Immanuel Kant are on the top for me. The first ones were influential in the development of many branches of knowledge, and solidified a tradition of critical thinking since antiquity. Immanuel Kant is kind of recent, but I'd say his works were really important for discussions around philosophy, science, arts, religion, and more. I admire Immanuel Kant greatly. I was recently reading a little text he wrote about psychiatric disorders and he was predicting modern paradigms in the 18th century. He was such a brilliant and knowledgeable person.

There are also incredible inventions and discoveries that have helped us all, but often those are the results of collective efforts. Still, as I said before, amazing human beings the ones that gave and still give these things for free. Getting personal again, I wouldn't be alive without many of those advances (vaccines, medications, etc.). On the technological side, the founder of that website that unlocks academic papers has had an impact that is yet to be analyzed.

Sorry! So many people...!

Did you know that Kant used to criticize people who drank more than one cup of coffee per day. Also, he would refill his own coffee cup before it was empty, so he never had more than one cup.
- That's hilarious! I guess he was a normal man with normal blunders in his daily life. I've heard about his meticulousness, that we had strict rules for his routines and reunions, but never details (and never the cup of coffee thing). Thanks for sharing.

Newton

James Color and Samantha Colour respectively, they invented color in their respective regions, before then the world was in black and white. Similar to Sandy Loam, very little is known about their personal life, or even what they look like. Hell, even their first names are up in the air.

It’s really tragic that we don’t celebrate the history of the people of Color the way we could.

Karl Marx

The individuals or group that figured out the wheel

Norman Borlaug

Zorbulon, and you’ve likely never known it.

Joseph Stalin

Didn't go far enough in denazifying the world, a consequence we now have to deal with today.
- Stalin was not perfect; for instance, he stopped at Berlin. But he also defeated Hitler and built the Soviet Union into an industrial superpower.
I dont think the millions he was responsible for their deaths would agree.
- You're right, the millions of Nazis and Trotskyites killed by Stalin probably would not agree that he had a positive impact on humanity. Thankfully I am neither a Nazi nor a Trotskyite. Which are you?

Just thought it was funny that you added "either present or past" the questiin

I'm gonna go with Napoleon purely for the legal code and opening the door for revolutions.

I suspect the couple of hundred thousand that died in his wars would disagree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonapartism

Nobody, I think this is an insane question.

So many different people had small impacts on humanity, most of it somewhat regional. Most of the heroes I could think of in Western countries will have had a very limited impact on Eastern history, and vice versa. Also, I am very sure nobody had only positive impact.

Another problem: not everybody will rate a certain impact equally as positive.

I'd suggest to remove focus and attention from god- or hero-like figures and shift it towards improvements won by community action.

I don't know why you are getting downvoted. This is a very valid and interesting point. Durable improvements are systemic, not individual, and the drive to look for heroes leads to nasty places.
from god- or hero-like figures
The fact that that was what you thought the question was about is quite telling
- It would be a reasonable segue in any case. Myths and heroes are big in every society, and sometimes we don't realise ours count.
Edgy.
- How? I think it's pretty accurate for OP to say it takes a team.

Taylor Swift ❤️

Is this supposed to be ironic? Is this meant to instigate a discussion on her impact on pollution as an individual vs the value of her pop entertainment production?
- No one changes me more than my girlfriend Taylor Swift 💖💖💖

Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, and The Buddha all had profound impacts on the way that humans relate to each other, and the world around them. Each promoted non-violence and/or pacifism in a world ruled by ruthlessness and cruelty. I don't think we would be anywhere close to where we are now with human rights without their contributions to human understanding of empathy.

One of these is not like the others. Gandhi is polarising at best in India, and just kind of a nice brown guy strawman in the West.
- Why is he polarizing in India?

Inventor or investor? 😂

Jesus Christ, hands down.

His hands are typically displayed stretched out to the sides, not down.
An apocalyptic rabbi who's had unfathomable violence done in his name? Yeah hey, thanks for the 'be nice to each other' rhetoric, but half the people spreading that message brought not peace but a sword.
And as a queer American I can attest his fanboys aren't exactly polite on their own turf.
Not even the most popular prophet from an Abrahamic religion. Second rate at best and losing to a war mongering pedophile at that.
His brother started it.

Mother Teresa

You might wanna research that.

Jesus Christ. Lived the life we should have lived and died the death that we deserve. Just so we can go and live with Him. No love is greater than that.

I sure did feel the love and embrace of the son of God as his proud followers directly contributed to various traumatic experiences and abuses growing up that fucked me up as a child and led to me being an emotionally and mentally stunted adult. If this is God's love, I ain't impressed, and don't gimme that shit about having my faith tested cause the sadistic bastard that sees global suffering en masse and explicitly allows it is not deserving of my faith.
Cool that your religion brings ya peace and joy mate, genuinely happy for ya. Shit sucks in the world and we all need some form of comfort, but my advice? Keep it to yourself.
- I'm so sorry to hear that. Satan does infiltrate places where God is meant to be. What I am sharing is more than a religion. It's a relationship with and eternal security in Christ. I stress this enough, the things that happened to you when you were younger WERE NOT okay in any way, shape or form. Bad things happen in schools as well, and other places that are supposed to be a sanctuary. Please don't allow your bad experience to reflect poorly on Christ. I think it was Gandhi who said "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
Yeah...if only his teachings would have survived...
- "Now just ignore all those instructions to implement socialism and go hate gay people!"
- They did, it's just that you have two billion people ignoring them because they aren't in the compilation Rome put together and everyone else ignores them because of exhaustion hearing about the Rome version their entire life.
  Super interesting stuff and way ahead of its time, understandably opposed by conservative Judaism at that period, and extremely different from what most people think was being discussed (nearly the opposite one might even say).
  But it's one of those rabbit holes that's only worth going down for personal discovery, as nearly nobody gives a crap about it for varying reasons.
- Boy, do I have news for you!
Thanks for existing, you are great advertisement for atheism, keep up the good work.
Oh you dumb motherfucker
What's the emoji for a wanking hand gesture?
Jehovah is a Lovecraftian monster with strong PR. Eternal torture for everyone who dared to be born is an indefensible concept that you glibly praise. As if the opportunity to kiss up to the entity threatening to shred your soul, forever, is some great gift, and not a grotesque exaggeration of every human dictator demanding limitless praise.
If you had infinite power to reshape the universe, and that universe still included hell, you would have to be some kind of asshole. Nevermind that the threat of torturing the average person, for any length of time, is horrific beyond consideration. Even if you said it only applied to the Hitlers of the world, the folks who did incomprehensible evil - why the fuck does your universe include incomprehensible evil?
And your apologia is to blame the powerless ants. Disgusting.
I find it problematic that you say it's a death we deserve. God is all like, "worship me or be tortured forever!" That's kinda toxic to be honest, and doesn't sound like love to me.
- We chose hell. Hell was made for satan and his angels. Heaven is prepared for us. And whether we don't like something or not doesn't dictate it's truth. I don't like Trump but he still exists.
Its great how people hate Jesus as an answer, but then love Stalin.
Its great how people hate Jesus as an answer, but then love Stalin.
- I'm pretty sure "Satan" would be a more popular answer

Biologist: Gregor Mendel. Monk who discovered the basis for genetics.

Ecologist: Charles Darwin. Discovered the theory of evolution.