The following list of influential figures from world history comes from Michael H. Hart's book The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History. In the book, Hart provides brief biographies of each of the individuals, as well as reasons for their ranking.

Rank	Name	Religious Affiliation	Influence
1	Muhammad	Islam	Prophet of Islam; conqueror of Arabia; Hart recognized that ranking Muhammad first might be controversial, but felt that, from a secular historian's perspective, this was the correct choice because Muhammad is the only man to have been both a founder of a major world religion and a major military/political leader. More
2	Isaac Newton	Anglican (rejected Trinitarianism, i.e., Athanasianism; believed in the Arianism of the Primitive Church)	physicist; theory of universal gravitation; laws of motion
3	Jesus Christ *	Judaism; Christianity	founder of Christianity

Comments from Readers of this Website about the Ranking of Jesus on this List

Jesus Christ
It is not uncommon for people to wonder why Jesus is not ranked first on this list. As far as the way the list appears on this web page, the answer is simple: We have reproduced Hart's list in exactly the order he wrote it. But it is true that many people, both Christians and secular historians, would have ranked Jesus first on a list of the world's most influential people. Hart said that he himself would have ranked Jesus first, if all the people who today identify themselves as Christians actually followed Jesus's teachings more substantially. He considers contemporary Muslims more influenced by Muhammad than contemporary Christians are by Jesus.

stole this from somebody elses site... time to step it up ladies and gentlemen?

something to think about