Innovative Thinkers: Pioneers Who Shaped Our Modern World

 Being an innovative thinker is a challenging task. It requires a natural curiosity about the world and a desire to make things better. An analytical mind is also required to analyze problems and arrive at possible solutions. Most innovative thinkers are also risk takers who are never satisfied with the way things are currently being done.

Some people in this field appear to be naturally talented, but if you look behind the curtain, you'll find that they have endured years of tireless effort with very little return. If you think you have what it takes, consider what you can learn from these innovative thinkers.

When Greta Thunberg was 16, she skipped school in the run-up to the Swedish national elections to encourage people to vote for candidates who supported climate change. After the election, Thunberg continued to skip school and said she would do so until her homeland fully agreed to the 2015 Paris climate accord. For his efforts, he was invited to speak at the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference. To reduce his footprint, he took a carbon-free ferry from Plymouth, England, to New York City for the 2019 United Nations Climate Change Summit. It was here that she said, "The eyes of all future generations are on you. And if you choose to fail us, I say – we will never forgive you."

After graduating high school in 2023, Thunberg became even more vocal with her political views. By December 2023, he has vowed solidarity with the Palestinians while declaring that the Israel-Hamas conflict is directly linked to climate change.

If you regularly use electronic devices such as personal computers, you can thank Steve Jobs. He is best known for co-founding Apple with Steve Wozniak.

Jobs was adopted shortly after his birth. He went to college for a year before dropping out, traveling to India and studying Zen Buddhism to seek enlightenment. After disagreements with Apple's board of directors, Jobs founded NeXT, which developed specialized computers for education. In 1997, when Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy, Jobs returned to lead the company after acquiring NeXT.

Shortly before his death on October 5, 2011, Jobs told the graduating class at Stanford University that he was afraid of living someone else's life, of not getting caught up in dogma, of living with the consequences of other people's thinking, or the noise of other people's voices. Don't waste your time scaffolding. Drown them. Instead, he urged graduates to "have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you really want to be."

Carl Sagan encouraged people to believe that extraterrestrial life could exist. He created the illustrated Pioneer Plaques placed on the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft so that if the spacecraft were intercepted, aliens would know where the spacecraft came from. He also developed the Voyager Golden Records which contained photographs and sounds sent from Earth into space aboard the Voyager spacecraft. He was among the first to argue that Venus's high temperature was due to greenhouse gases. During his career at Cornell and Harvard Universities, Sagan wrote more than 600 scientific papers and worked on more than 20 books.

Sagan received numerous awards during his life, including the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal, the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, two Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and a Hugo Award. Sagan is quoted as saying, "We can measure our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good."

Albert Einstein had a profound influence on the world of physics. While students everywhere have learned about his theory of relativity, he also made important contributions to the field of quantum mechanics and furthered the study of physics. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 for his discovery of the law of photoelectric effect.

In 1933, the German Student Union offered a $5,000 bounty on Einstein's head, declaring that "Jewish intellectualism is dead." Suddenly finding himself without his country, he traveled to the United States, where he described the book burning events taking place in Germany at the time as "spontaneous emotional outbursts" by those who "wanted intellectual freedom." Afraid of people's influence."

Despite his success, Albert Einstein failed in his final project: developing a unified field theory combining electromagnetism and gravity into a single framework.

Isaac Newton's father died before he was born, and when he was only 3 years old his mother remarried, leaving his care to his maternal grandmother. Newton was also born prematurely and was very small for his age. Yet he did not let his childhood prevent him from becoming a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and writer.

His book "Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica" (often referred to simply as "Principia"), published in 1687, created the field of classical mechanics, and he is credited with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing the calculus. . He also built the first reflecting telescope and developed a sophisticated theory of color. He became Director of the Royal Mint, where he frequented bars and taverns to search for people making counterfeit money. Newton died on March 20, 1727 and eight days later, nobles, scientists and philosophers attended his funeral as he became the first scientist buried in Westminster Abbey.

Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the first person to win the prize twice, once each in physics and chemistry. She coined the term radioactivity while working in Paris with her husband Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel. She lost her husband when she was only 39 years old. Only when the Curies won their first Nobel Prize could they afford to hire a laboratory assistant.

Despite living in Paris, where she was the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, she never lost her native Polish identity. In fact, he named the first chemical element he discovered, polonium, after his birthplace. Marie Curie is quoted as saying, "Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more so that we may fear less."

Thomas Edison was among the first to apply organized science principles and teamwork in his endeavors. Edison's first patent was for an electric vote recorder. The result of his reliance on organized science principles and teamwork was that he revolutionized the modern industrial world by inventing the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb in his research laboratory. He holds 1,093 US patents in his name, along with patents from other countries.

Despite his outstanding achievements, Edison was deaf. He received little formal education, but was an avid reader. After establishing the first industrial research laboratory, he worked to expand it so that it eventually covered two city blocks. Edison said that he wanted every possible material to be available in his laboratory. Throughout the laboratory, including his desk, Edison posted Sir Joshua Reynolds' quote, "There is no expedient to which no man will resort to avoid the actual labor of thinking."

Charles Darwin developed the theory of natural selection, which is now generally accepted. After spending five years traveling on HMS Beagle, Darwin wrote about his findings and his publication became very popular. While Darwin wrote many books, his most famous was "On the Origin of Species", published in 1859.

Darwin's mother died when he was only 8 years old. He originally went to school to become a medical doctor but neglected his studies. Then, his father sent him to school to become a parson, but Darwin preferred to spend time outside in nature rather than studying. After leaving school for the second time, his father raised enough money to make him a gentleman scientist. Yet Darwin continued to work hard to write and protect his collected objects. He even fell ill due to working too much.

Darwin is quoted as saying, "The most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability."