On Thu, 10 Sep 2009 12:09:47 -0500, wrote:

Asking "who's the best" is as nebulous of a question that may be
asked, as it has been recently posed. When trying to refine the
question to ascertain what was meant, one might suspect that the
question was intended to get at who personal favorites are among
luminaries, or it might just be to determine what some might consider
as the most famous among notables of history;

http://www.whoismorefamous.com/?fulllist=1

That list was interesting. If I had to make a list in no particular
order, starting with those who made modern communications:

Alexander Graham Bell
Heinrich Hertz
Guglielmo Marconi
Reginald Fessenden
Nikola Tesla
George Westinghouse
Ernst Alexanderson
Lee DeForest
Edwin Armstrong
Oliver Lodge
Hiram Percy Maxim

Mathematics:

Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss
Leonhard Paul Euler
Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann
Jules Henri Poincaré
David Hilbert
Joseph-Louis Lagrange
Pierre de Fermat

Engineers:

Jack Kilby
Jack Welch
Elmer Gaden
Leo Beranek
John Bardeen
Seymour Cray
Robert Moog
Hyman G. Rickover
Ludwig Prandtl

That's about it off the top of my head. :)