Below is a list of various people who have had a significant impact on the world, through their understanding of meaning, and it's role in their life. If you have an addition to the list, please e-mail our webmaster (webmaster@meaning.ca) with as many details as you can provide.

Albert Schweitzer
Albert was a German theologian, musician, philosopher, and physician. He received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize.

Alfred Adler
Alfred Adler originated the ideas which, to a large extent, have been incorporated in the mainstream of present-day theory and practice of psychology and psychopathology.

Alfred Nobel
Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer and the inventor of dynamite. In his last will, he used his enormous fortune to institute the Nobel Prizes.

Archbihop Desmond Tutu
South African cleric, was first elected and ordained black South African Anglican Archbishop. An anti-apartheid activist, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

Aung San Suu Kyi
Suu Kyi is the current elected Prime Minister of Myanmar (Burma), however the former ruling military government refused to release power, and placed her under house arrest. Since her first arrest in 1989, she has continually been aressted and released. She is currently the only imprisoned Nobel Laurate.

Billy Graham
Billy Graham is an American Christian evangelist who has preached the message of Christianity around the world, reaching live audiences of 210 million people in 185 countries.

Bono (Paul Hewson)
Irish rockstar, lead singer in popular band U2. He has dedicated himself to various causes, including the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland, enviromental issues (with GreenPeace), politcal issues (with Amnesty International), and the problems in Africa (with the ONE campaign, and DATA, groups he helped found).

Corrie ten Boom
Corrie was able to rescue many Jews from certain death at the hands of the Nazi SS during the Holocaust.

His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama
The supreme head of Tibetan Buddhism and the head of the Exiled Government of Tibet in India. His life work has been working for Tibetan independance and teaching Buddhist thought, as well as promoting understanding and unity.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged in the concentration camp at Flossenbürg on April 9, 1945, one of four members of his immediate family to die at the hands of the Nazi regime. He was a vocal anti-Nazi commentator, and has since become one of the most read theologians of the 20th century.

Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale, who came to be known as The Lady with the Lamp, was the pioneer of modern nursing.

Helen Keller
Keller was a deaf-blind American author, activist and lecturer.

Henri Nouwen
A dutch Priest and author, after decades of teaching, he took a job as the pastor of a L'Arche community called "Daybreak", a place where developmentally challenged people live in community with care-givers.

Jesus Christ
Jesus is the most influential person in human history. He came to this world for a single purpose -- to die on the cross in order to save the world from its self-destructive path.

Joanne (Jo, JK) Rowling, OBE
An English children's fiction writer and creator of the Harry Potter Series. She went from impoverished single-mother, to multi-million selling billionaire.

John Marks Templeton
Sir John Marks Templeton is a highly successful pioneer of globally diversified mutual funds, becoming a billionaire. He established the John Templeton Foundation.

Linus Pauling
Pauling was an American physical chemist, widely regarded as the premier chemist of the twentieth century.

Ludwig Von Beethoven
Beethoven is widely regarded as one of the greatest of composers.

Madame Curie
Marie Curie opened up the science of radioactivity, and is best known as the discoverer of the radioactive elements polonium and radium. She also was the first person to win two Nobel prizes.

Mahatma Ghandi
Gandhi was a national icon who led the non-violent struggle for India's independence from British colonial rule, empowered by tens of millions of common Indians.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
King is one of the most significant leaders in U.S. history and in the modern history of non-violence, and is considered a hero, peacemaker and martyr by many people around the world.

Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa was an Albanian Catholic nun who founded the Missionaries of Charity. Her work among the poor of Kolkata (Calcutta) made her one of the world's most famous people, and it is widely expected she will quickly be canonized.

Nelson Mandela
Mandela was the first democratically elected President of South Africa, having previously been a prominent anti-apartheid activist there.

Paul Erdõs
He was an immensely prolific Hungarian mathematician who, with hundreds of collaborators, worked on problems in combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, classical analysis, approximation theory, set theory and probability theory.

Paul Rusesabagina
He was a moderate Hutu in Rawanda during the 1994 Genocide. Using his connections and position as acting Manager of the Mille Collines Hotel, he managed to shelter over 1,260 Tutsis and moderate Hutus within the hotel's compound.

Dr Stephen Hawking
Dr Hawking is one of the leading physicists in the world today. Over a career of nearly 50 years, he has pioneered numerous ideas, many of which have changed the way we see the universe. And all this while living with severe ALS, being quadripelegic, and unable to speak without a computer, since 1985.

Tony Dungy
Coach Dungy led the Indianapolis Colts to the 2007 Superbowl, becoming the first African-American head coach to do so. Since his son's death in 2005, he has actively befriended and supported other grieving parents.

Viktor Frankl
Frankl was the founder of logotherapy and Existential Analysis, the "Third Viennese School" of psychotherapy. His book Man's Search for Meaning chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate and describes his psychotherapeutic method of finding a reason to live.