Browse the index

Clockmaker turned mental healer whose notebooks seeded the entire New Thought movement.

Swedenborgian minister who wrote the first systematic books of mental-cure philosophy.

His Narrative was abolition's most powerful weapon.

Leaves of Grass invented American poetic voice.

1,800 poems found in a drawer redefined lyric compression.

Identified the mosquito as the vector of yellow fever.

Essayist who popularised 'thoughts are things' and the idea of mental forces.

Built modern steel and then invented large-scale philanthropy.

Wrote a novel narrated by a dead man in 1881; Brazil's greatest writer.

Founded American psychology and, with Peirce, pragmatism; studied New Thought as 'mind-cure'.

Her recovery from tuberculosis through affirmative prayer began the Unity movement.

1,093 patents and the industrial research laboratory itself.

The 'teacher of teachers' who trained the founders of Unity, Divine Science and Religious Science.

Poet-revolutionary whose essays founded Cuban and pan-American thought.

Co-founded Unity with Myrtle Fillmore in 1889; built its prayer ministry and publishing house.

Scientific management — the origin of every productivity metric and its discontents.

Pragmatist whose learning-by-doing reshaped schools on every continent.

The Science of Getting Rich turned New Thought toward prosperity and later inspired The Secret.

Co-founded Divine Science and its Denver college of practitioners.

Prolific author who named the law of attraction and wrote as Yogi Ramacharaka.

The moving assembly line and the five-dollar day created mass consumer industry.

Crop rotation and peanut science that rescued Southern soil and farmers.

Built a national cosmetics company and became America's first self-made Black woman millionaire.

The Souls of Black Folk and the concept of double consciousness.

Dentist whose global survey of traditional diets tied refined food to physical degeneration.

Illustrator turned teacher whose parables made affirmation practice everyday.

Eradicated yellow fever from Rio and founded Brazilian public health.

German émigré who founded American naturopathy and its first college in 1902.

Flew the first publicly witnessed powered aircraft in Europe.

Described a disease, its parasite and its vector single-handedly.

Think and Grow Rich carried New Thought into business self-help; his sourcing remains disputed.

First Latin American science laureate; pituitary role in glucose metabolism.

Founded Religious Science and wrote The Science of Mind, its systematic textbook.

First Latin American to win the literature Nobel; teacher and diplomat.

Co-discovered insulin and sold the patent for one dollar.

Discovered pantothenic acid and argued for biochemical individuality — the idea beneath functional medicine.

Built Yoknapatawpha County and the Southern conscience.

The Power of Positive Thinking sold tens of millions and mainstreamed the movement.

Stripped English prose to the bone.

Invented the labyrinth-library imagination that prefigured hypertext.

El Señor Presidente invented the Latin American dictator novel.

Statistical quality control rebuilt Japanese manufacturing and then global industry.