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The 25 Smartest People of the Decade
Who are the greatest minds of the past 10 years? The Daily Beast convened a panel of moguls, academics—and more than 40 credentialed geniuses—to settle the matter once and for all.
It was a decade that most will rank among the worst ever, book-ended by a tragic terrorist attack and an epic financial meltdown, with a lot of bitter politics and debt-fueled spending in between.
But there was also a lot of brilliance: genius thinking that transformed information, politics, business, and medicine. For all the pain and the angst, centuries from now historians may well measure the last 10 years by our biggest brains and the transformative changes they set in motion. The Daily Beast thought we’d help them with a present-day measure of the greatest minds of our times: the 25 smartest people of the decade.
Click the Image to View Our Gallery of the 25 Smartest People of the Decade
- pure brainpower
- using that brainpower to affect change in their field or the world at large
- affecting the change which merits recognition in the past decade, not before
That decided, we convened more than two dozen of the smartest people we know to develop a list of nominees. This diverse group included the president of Harvard (Drew Faust) and Yale (Rick Levin); business moguls like David Geffen, Mort Zuckerman, and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg; academic thinkers like Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr., Steven Pinker, Nassim Taleb and Simon Johnson; and savvy writers like Christopher Buckley, Peggy Noonan, and Nate Silver.
These nominators wound up submitting over 100 names. We looked for overlaps and also gave more weight to nominations made by people in their field. In the end, 25 finalists rose to the top of the list.
• Christopher Buckley's Smart 16So how to rank these 25 brilliant minds? For that task, we turned to a group of fellow savants: winners of the MacArthur Foundation’s coveted “genius” grant during the past decade. More than 40 MacArthur fellows took the time to go through each finalist’s credentials, and rank them in order, based on our criteria. A genius-on-genius survey.
There are some people you’d expect (Steve Jobs, Harold Varmus, Nouriel Roubini), some surprises (Ayman al-Zawahiri?), and even a few names you may not recognize. Intellectuals crave debate—and hopefully this will start some. See the full countdown here.
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Paul Schrodt is a writer living in New York City. He has contributed to New York magazine, Radar, and Esquire.com.
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coltraning
ok, as silly and weird as a website idea should be coming from Tina Brown's breathless and fervid mind. However, how can you put HRC at #3 and leave BHO off the list, the dude who ran the campaign that out-thought all the best and brightest and low and slimiest that Bill and Hillary had to offer, and then dusted the media's bromance boy, McCain...
WestVillager
Your example implies the talent is brains, but it was others who derived the insights and developed the election strategy. BHO is execution. Though nearly flawless there, he's not shared enough personal opinion since to warrant a place on this list comparatively.
sonofloud
How smart do you have to be to let Wall Street pay for your campaign and smear your opponent (and her husband) as racists?
sophia5
What do all 25 of the so-called " smartest people "
have in common ?
They, along with the rest of us,
including the " Nominators " of this list,
rely on the man who's pretty much at the
forefront of the World's
current technological age, who happens
to be NOT included on the list . . . BILL GATES.
Makes the poll seem pointless.
Matt572
Windows is so 90's... But technologically, Jobs is irrelevant as well. Both Mac and Windows are really just packaging for tech. He's a marketing and product genius, but that's a far cry from being 'responsible for "just about every cool thing about computers." Open source is where the puck is going to be... The Google boys certainly deserve their spot at the top.
jazzsmith
coltraning - don't confuse intelligence for the ability to induce mass hypnosis. And don't discount the democratic party's overt exercise in misogyny during the primaries. Every day Obama confirms what I kept telling people in '08 - he's just not ready to sit at the grown-up's table. Can you imagine McKrystal trying to pull his crap on Commander-in-Chief Clinton? She'd rip him a new one...! Obama just sat on his hands for 92 days before obeying the General's orders.
Ozone69
Hillary? Please. That woman couldn't detect her husband's numerous affairs and blamed it on a right wing conspiracy. She also lost to a very liberal, inexperienced, freshman senator with disturbing associates. Not bright at all.
Picachu
She is certainly not your intellectual equal.
jclvr93
I agree with John Stewart; Hillary Clinton's face is where erections go to die.
winston1
Arianna Huffington #14 ???? Now you realize what a joke this poll is. Hillary Clinton #4 yet again foolish, what has this woman achieved nothing, she rode on her husband's coattails Mayor Bloomberg give me a break, he should be on the nanny poll or dictator poll.
The only one I think who is deserving is Elizabeth Warren, she should be in the single digit.
WestVillager
I have to agree about Huffington. She only recently became studied enough to qualify. However, Clinton is most certainly one of the smartest. Warren? She is smart, but seems rather manipulative.
sophia5
Huffington couldn't figure out her own husband was gay ?
Why not include Liza Minnelli, a two time champion
of seemingly (?) " convenient " marriages, first Peter Allen, then David Gest.
WestVillager
Soph5: omg totally! She knew or didn't know. Makes her a little sketchy either way. As for Liza, well, I blame the Klonopin.
angst7
Winston: Your readings are spot on on each mentioned person. I personally would have put Elizabeth Warren at #1 or 2. Perhaps Tina with Huffington and Clinton was just trying to curry some favor here. Too much of this is just politics.
Cashmoney
Agree about Huffington. She's more an attention whore than a serious person. I can't wait until decides being a Brentwood lefty is a bore and evolves into something else. Most likely, she'll go back to being a rightwing kook of some kind or another.
Elizabeth Warren -- agree she deserves a higher ranking, certainly in terms of how important she is.
avocats
Warren is a one-trick pony.
Yogini369
I totally agree about Elizabeth Warren being in the single digit section and I still don't understand why we haven't been able to hear more of her thoughts and ideas on the neverending entertainmentnews programs instead of all the empty pundit rhetoric we've been exposed to.
gabbygale
Are you aware that Arianna Huffington has a Master's in Economics?
WestVillager
George W Bush went to Phillips and Yale but he never struck me as smart. What's your point?
neverlate
Not a bad list. Some on ity may just be lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Also, Bill is probably fuming over Hilary being on the list without him - nice touch!
crypto
Rove appears to be high here. Almost everything he has predicted has come to pass. And he is usually two steps ahead of congress on everything.
nortonclybourn
Just look at how that Permanent Republican Majority worked out. It ranks right up there with the Thousand Year Reich.
Picachu
If Rove has any track record at prediction it is because he is manipulating events through politcal dirty tricks (as taught by his mentor Lee Atwater) to come to what his ideaology dictates.
dsmith42
Your entry on Steven Chu has a mistake. He was a graduate student and post-doctoral researcher at Berkeley, but his professorship was across the Bay at Sanford University.
passin-thru
Chu did teach at Stanford, but also was a professor at Cal from 2004.
Yakubu
To see how ridiculous this list is, recall that Hillary Clinton (a) failed her Washington DC bar exams, (b) has never produced a scholarly book or any substantial piece of legal scholarship, (c) lost a presidential campaign in which she was the overwhelming favorite of the Establishment--because of her husband's accomplishments and connections.
Violinhunter
This makes perfect sense.
sonofloud
Arianna switches from conservative to liberal and back again whenever the situation calls for it. Do a little reading about her past before she came to America.
Her "values" are as phony as that Zsa Zsa Gabor accent.
Dorothea
Have to disagree with including Arianna Huffington - seen her on panels and wonder how she has achieved such success. I've heard better conversation at the dollar store.
Veronicaxy
Hillary has the strongest intellectual resume in politics? What exactly substantiates that? Not degrees, not highly regarded viewpoints by her peers or moving speeches that rallied others to her cause.
I'm one of the few who would like to be a believer but can't for lack of evidence.
Being a First Lady, working the political machine with the most popular ex-(Democratic) President to get a congressional seat in a district you barely know thanks to hubby's cronies, make it to the Presidential primaries (star power by association), and being appointed by a President who is smart enough to know if he's your boss you can do less political damage for 2012 -- those are interesting accomplishments but they're all 'success by association'.
What has she done or stood for after college (the peak of her own personal life w/ truly impressive achievements & stances imho) on her own that I should respect & vote for?
Not trying to be snarky, I'd really like to understand this.
dahniuru
Scary, isn't it, when Hillary is considered the smartest politician in office?
tolatetocry
so the Obamas aren't the smartest people in the room anymore? but Hillary is back as the most brilliant woman! Liberals are just so transparent!
Ariana was married to a gay guy with a billion dollars, so this makes her brilliant? I thought that's how all the liberal women get where their going, on their husbands shirttails!
sailormoon
without that money,we would never know who AH is.?Not important to anyone
sailormoon
AH,she goes with the flow.!! She is such a manipulation,and repeating what others say..She is not true to any party,,she is not a role model to anyone,Nor influenced,and without the money she has, she would be no one.Hillary unfortunately,might be admired but she is not concidered smart,nor brilliant.Nor wise, in many circles, she is not concidered,intelligent.She did not make it!!She has her position,now because it is convenient,for everyone.She is well known,has been a former first lady,But not because she is concidered intelligent.There are other women,who have made a very big impact,and are trully wise and smart.Warren,Novogratz amazing.Page&Brin,changed the world.Steve Jobs,genius.Bezos,Wright,Rove,that is brains,real political brains,Gladwell,Wales,Plouffre,brilliant,Blackburn,Varmus,ChuYunus,and Bloomberg, ,I would say Sherryl Sandburg did not make it facebook,but she could have been there. And Meg Whitman,Ebay,? it went over the decade?
Dreamer4Ever
Lists of smartest people: always nice to gawk at when you have no smarts of your own.
cultcrit
Greatest minds? More like "most successful at getting attention." If the most widely influential ideas of the decade were also the greatest, why is there still pervasive, structural idiocy in our world? This list rests on a market-based meritocratic fallacy that the cream always rises to the top. Far greater minds (such as those that Malcolm Gladwell tries-- and fails-- to summarize with facile parsimony) have generated necessary truths that remain to be heard. Thesis: the keepers of the greatest minds of the decade have never been mentioned in People magazine.
flyoverland
Assuming Plouffe doesn't spend much time in Chicago anymore, not one American listed who doesn't live within 50 miles of either coast. You people really need to get out of your insular world a little more.
Picachu
And into your insular world, I assume?
flyoverland
It beats your mom's basement.
SFGiants
Sorry, fly--Picachu's got you there.
flyoverland
That from a guy who can throw a baseball into the Pacific.
Picachu
Okay, some of these people have some smarts, but some of the people on the list - you gotta be f_cking kidding! In the case of Karl Rove you are mistaking a complete lack of morals and deviousness for intelligence. He may be cunning, but he's hardly an intellectual giant. He's just willing to do whatever it takes, no matter how dirty, underhanded, or unethical, to win. Pretty much your prototypical neo-con republican.
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