100 Years Carnegie: The Contenders

The Winners

Quotes from the Faculty:

Scientists

"[Rosalind Franklin] was a biophysicist who pioneered the study of molecular structures. She first found evidence of the helical structure of a DNA molecule; her contributions to science are largely overlooked by history, because Watson and Crick effectively stole her thunder by using her work to support their own observations of DNA's structure."

-- Dr. Elizabeth Capaldi
Assistant Professor of Biology and Animal Behavior

"James Clerk Maxwell should have been included - he is still regarded as probably the third greatest physicist (behind Newton and Einstein) and his contributions were already appreciated by 1905. His equations for electricity and magnetism unified seemingly distinct phenomena, revealed what light is, and planted the seeds for understanding relativity. On top of that, he did extremely important work in thermodynamics."

-- Dr. Ben Vollmayr-Lee
Associate Professor of Physics

"Louis Pasteur. He made breakthrough contributions to our understanding of microorganisms and their involvement in biological processes, especially as causes of disease. This led to the development of vaccines, aseptic techniques in medicine, and pasteurization, all of which have been invaluable advances for health and the quality of life."

-- Dr. Kevin Myers
Assistant Professor of Psychology

Philosophers

"John Dewey - As someone in the field of education, I contuinue to find the work of John Dewey to be provocative and useful. He proposed a new kind of education that was remarkable in its day and continues to influence and challenge our notions of what it means to be well educated. In addition, his significant contributions to philosophy, the arts, psychology, and education demonstrate that he was one of the most influential minds of the 2oth century."

-- Dr. Abe Feuerstein
Associate Professor of Education

"I would advocate [John Stuart] Mill or [John] Locke over Hegel...Surely, Mill's liberalism and consequentialism - or Locke's defense of property rights - lay the philosophical groundwork, more so than Hegel, for the advance of (a) American political theory, (b) contemporary political philosophy, and even (c) American triumphalism."

-- Dr. Michael E. Johnson-Cramer
Assistant Professor of Management

"A mischievous choice, to be panned by my philosophical colleagues, would be Ayn Rand, who has probably been read by more people than all the other dead white men combined."

-- Dr. P. Aarne Vesilind
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Literary Figures

"I would have originally added Sappho, the 7th century BCE poetess from the Greek isle of Lesbos. She should have been included simply because of the beauty and imagery of her poetry, of course, but also because she very nearly offers us the only portrait of life in early Greek antiquity in a woman's voice."

-- Dr. Stephanie Larson
Assistant Professor of Classics

"Walt Whitman - because this list needs a rustic."

-- Dr. Thomas Cassidy
Assistant Professor of Mathematics

Statesmen

"Thomas Jefferson - I think Jefferson's commitment to the concepts of public education and religious freedom - in addition to numerous other contributions - make him a good fit. Also, if he hadn't created UVA I might never have made it to Bucknell!"

-- Dr. Abe Feuerstein
Associate Professor of Education

"[Winston] Churchill is also in this category of world influence. Not only was he probably the main rallying point for democracy when England more or less was going it alone in the Second World War, for good or ill he was also a significant player in the British government since about 1905...He coined the phrase 'Iron Curtain' and certainly affected the Cold War through his policies, as well as presiding over the intial breakup of the British empire. On top of all this, he was also a writer of sufficient merit to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature."

-- Dr. Brian Williams
Associate Professor of Chemistry

New Categories

"Martin Luther King Jr. The great historical issue that never goes away in America is race, and Dr. King did more to change race relations in this nation (and the cause of human emancipation in general) than anyone else in the modern era. He is the most important American of the 20th century, and number two isn't close."

-- Dr. John Hunter
Assistant Professor of Comparative Humanities

Food Moguls

"Which would you rather have: a bucket of golden crispy chicken, or a biography of William McKinley?"

-- anonymous

Remove

"McKinley, by common consensus a mediocre president, an architect of an unfortunate period of US imperialism, who had only recently been assassinated, thereby increasing his popularity just at the moment when the building was being planned. It's parallel to the large number of public facilities named for JFK in the 1960s. In both cases we now can see them as seriously flawed."

-- Dr. John Peeler
Professor of Political Science