The most important non-famous Americans
U.S. high school students were asked to name the most famous Americans in history and on average listed:
Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Benjamin Franklin, Amelia Earhart, Oprah Winfrey, Marilyn Monroe, Thomas Edison, and Albert Einstein.
Although indeed famous, a few of these people had little real influence on American history. I was thinking about who were the most important non-famous people in U.S. history. I'll define non-famous as someone I suspect is known by less than 20% of the U.S. population.
Here is my list of the most important non-famous Americans:
- John von Neumann (Mathematician and computer pioneer.)
- James K. Polk (Greatly expanded U.S. territories.)
- Norman Borlaug (Saved more lives than anyone else in human history.)
- Jonas Salk / Albert Sabin (Developed Polio treatments)
- John C. Calhoun (Exasperated political tensions between the North and South)
- Earl Warren (Supreme Court Chief Justice
- John Marshall (Supreme Court Chief Justice.)
- J. P. Morgan (Banker)
