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Category
Era
7 figures
Plutarch
46 – 119The biographer who invented the idea that character makes history.
Greece·Literature · History · PhilosophyFull profile
Alexander von Humboldt
1769 – 1859Invented the idea that nature is a single connected web — and that we can wreck it.
Germany·Biology · Astronomy · HistoryFull profile
Friedrich Engels
1820 – 1895The Condition of the Working Class in England founded empirical labour economics.
Germany·Political Economy · History
Max Weber
1864 – 1920Linked bureaucracy, religion and capitalism; founded the sociology of organisations.
Germany·Political Economy · History
Karl Polanyi
1886 – 1964The Great Transformation showed markets are made by states, not found in nature.
Hungary·Political Economy · History
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
1918 – 2008The Gulag Archipelago broke the Soviet system's moral standing.
Russia·Literature · HistoryNobel
Svetlana Alexievich
b. 1948Built a new documentary genre from thousands of interviews.
Belarus·Literature · HistoryNobel