By accident I happened to see part of the A&E biography channel last nite
and found that they were listing their 100 most important folks in the
millenium. Now that can be a very contentious thing, but I was pleased to
see that Newton was the second most important person, the first being
Guttenberg for the printing press. Others in the top 10 were Einstein,
Galileo, and Copernicus.
so now I can tell my students we are learning about ideas developed by 4
of the 10 most important persons is the last 1000 years...maybe I'll get
there attention :-).