The Prospect/FP Top 100 Public Intellectuals

Who are the world's leading public intellectuals?

The October 2005 cover of Prospect

Foreign Policy and Britain's Prospect magazine selected their top 100, and invited readers to vote for their top five. Here is their selection criteria.

The irony of this "thinkers" list is that it does not bear thinking about too closely. The problems of definition and judgment that it involves would discourage more rigorous souls. But some criteria must be spelled out. What is a public intellectual? Someone who has shown distinction in their own field along with the ability to communicate ideas and influence debate outside of it.

Candidates must have been alive, and still active in public life (though many on this list are past their prime). Such criteria ruled out the likes of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Milton Friedman, who would have been automatic inclusions 20 or so years ago. This list is about public influence, not intrinsic achievement. And that is where things get really tricky. Judging influence is hard enough inside one's own culture, but when you are peering across cultures and languages, the problem becomes far harder. Obviously our list of 100 has been influenced by where most of us sit, in the English-speaking West.

We tried to avoid the "box ticking" problem of having x Chinese, y economists and z under-50s. But we have also tried to give due weight to the important thinkers in all the main intellectual disciplines and centers of population. We also tried to ensure that all names on the list are influential in at least a few countries in their region, if not the entire globe.

Voting closed October 10.

—Prospect and Foreign Policy

The Prospect/FP Top 100 Public Intellectuals

Name, Occupation(s), Country

Chinua Achebe, Novelist, Nigeria
Jean Baudrillard, Sociologist, cultural critic, France
Gary Becker, Economist, United States
Pope Benedict XVI, Religious leader Germany, Vatican
Jagdish Bhagwati, Economist, India, United States
Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Sociologist, former president, Brazil
Noam Chomsky, Linguist, author, activist, United States
J.M. Coetzee, Novelist, South Africa
Gordon Conway, Agricultural, ecologist, Britain
Robert Cooper, Diplomat, writer, Britain
Richard Dawkins, Biologist, polemicist, Britain
Hernando de Soto, Economist, Peru
Pavol Deme, Political analyst, Slovakia
Daniel Dennett, Philosopher, United States
Kemal Dervis, Economist, Turkey
Jared Diamond, Biologist, physiologist, historian, United States
Freeman Dyson, Physicist, United States
Shirin Ebadi, Lawyer, human rights activist, Iran
Umberto Eco, Medievalist, novelist, Italy
Paul Ekman, Psychologist, United States
Fan Gang, Economist, China
Niall Ferguson, Historian, Britain
Alain Finkielkraut, Essayist, philosopher, France
Thomas Friedman, Journalist, author, United States
Francis Fukuyama, Political scientist, author, United States
Gao Xingjian, Novelist, playwright, China
Howard Gardner, Psychologist, United States
Timothy Garton Ash, Historian, Britain
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Scholar, cultural critic, United States
Clifford Geertz, Anthropologist, United States
Neil Gershenfeld, Physicist, computer scientist, United States
Anthony Giddens, Sociologist, Britain
Germaine Greer, Writer, academic, Australia, Britain
Jürgen Habermas, Philosopher, Germany
Ha Jin, Novelist, China
Václav Havel, Playwright, statesman, Czech Republic
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Politician, Somalia, Netherlands
Christopher Hitchens, Polemicist, United States, Britain
Eric Hobsbawm, Historian, Britain
Robert Hughes, Art critic, Australia
Samuel Huntington, Political scientist, United States
Michael Ignatieff, Writer, human rights theorist, Canada
Shintaro Ishihara, Politician, author, Japan
Robert Kagan, Author, political commentator, United States
Daniel Kahneman, Psychologist, Israel, United States
Sergei Karaganov, Foreign-policy analyst, Russia
Paul Kennedy, Historian, Britain, United States
Gilles Kepel, Scholar of Islam, France
Naomi Klein, Journalist, author, Canada
Rem Koolhaas, Architect, Netherlands
Enrique Krauze, Historian, Mexico
Julia Kristeva, Philosopher, France
Paul Krugman, Economist, columnist, United States
Hans Küng, Theologian, Switzerland
Jaron Lanier, Virtual reality pioneer, United States
Lawrence Lessig, Legal scholar, United States
Bernard Lewis, Historian, Britain, United States
Bjørn Lomborg, Environmentalist, Denmark
James Lovelock, Scientist, Britain
Kishore Mahbubani, Author, diplomat, Singapore
Ali Mazrui, Political scientist, Kenya
Sunita Narain, Environmentalist, India
Antonio Negri, Philosopher, activist, Italy
Martha Nussbaum, Philosopher, United States
Sari Nusseibeh, Diplomat, philosopher, Palestine
Kenichi Ohmae, Management theorist, Japan
Amos Oz, Novelist, Israel
Camille Paglia, Social critic, author, United States
Orhan Pamuk, Novelist, Turkey
Steven Pinker, Experimental psychologist, Canada, United States
Richard Posner, Judge, scholar, author, United States
Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Writer, dissident, Indonesia
Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Cleric, Egypt, Qatar
Robert Putnam, Political scientist, United States
Tariq Ramadan, Scholar of Islam, Switzerland
Martin Rees, Astrophysicist, Britain
Richard Rorty, Philosopher, United States
Salman Rushdie, Novelist, political commentator, Britain, India
Jeffrey Sachs, Economist, United States
Elaine Scarry, Literary theorist, United States
Amartya Sen, Economist, India
Peter Singer, Philosopher, Australia
Ali al-Sistani, Cleric, Iran, Iraq
Peter Sloterdijk, Philosopher, Germany
Abdolkarim Soroush, Religious theorist, Iran
Wole Soyinka, Playwright, activist, Nigeria
Lawrence Summers, Economist, academic, United States
Mario Vargas Llosa, Novelist, politician, Peru
Harold Varmus, Medical scientist, United States
Craig Venter, Biologist, businessman, United States
Michael Walzer, Political theorist, United States
Florence Wambugu, Plant Pathologist, Kenya
Wang Jisi, Foreign-policy analyst, China
Steven Weinberg, Physicist, United States
E.O. Wilson, Biologist, United States
James Q. Wilson, Criminologist, United States
Paul Wolfowitz, Policymaker, academic, United States
Fareed Zakaria, Journalist, author, United States
Zheng Bijian, Political scientist, China
Slavoj Zizek, Sociologist, philosopher, Slovenia