Gallup's List of People that Americans Most Widely Admired in the 20th Century is a poll published in December 1999 by The Gallup Organization to determine who around the world Americans admire most, in the 20th century. [1]
Gallup has constructed a yearly Gallup's most admired man and woman poll list since 1948 [2] but this poll covers the most notable figures of the entire century. They combined the results from the previous polls with a new preliminary poll to determine the 18 most admired people. [1] The 1999 final poll produced an ordered list of 18 people, 12 of whom were males and 12 of whom were American citizens; the highest ranked non-American and non-male was (Saint) Mother Teresa, at #1.
As of 2024, at 78, Bill Clinton is the only surviving person on the list. Previously, Ronald Reagan, John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, Nelson Mandela, and Billy Graham (the longest living person at 99) were all still living by the time the list was published, but they have since died.
Rank | Portrait | Name | Percentage | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Mother Teresa (1910–1997) | 49% | [3] | |
2 | Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) | 34% | [4] | |
3 | John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) | 32% | ||
4 | Albert Einstein (1879–1955) | 31% | ||
5 | Helen Keller (1880–1968) | 30% | ||
6 | Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) | 26% | [5] | |
7 | Billy Graham (1918–2018) | 26% | [5] | |
8 | Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) | 25% | [5] | |
9 | Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) | 22% | [6] | |
10 | Winston Churchill (1874–1965) | 20% | [7] | |
11 | Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) | 18% | [7] | |
12 | Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) | 18% | ||
13 | Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) | 18% | ||
14 | Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) | 17% | ||
15 | Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) | 17% | ||
16 | Henry Ford (1863–1947) | 15% | ||
17 | Bill Clinton (b. 1946) | 10% | ||
18 | Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) | 9% |
100 Greatest Britons is a television series that was broadcast by the BBC in 2002. It was based on a television poll conducted to determine who the British people at that time considered the greatest Britons in history. The series included individual programmes featuring the top ten, with viewers having further opportunity to vote after each programme. It concluded with a debate and final determination of the ranking of the top ten. Although many living people were included among the top 100, all of the top ten were deceased.
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Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu MC, better known as Mother Teresa or Saint Mother Teresa, was an Albanian-Indian Catholic nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity and is a Catholic saint. Born in Skopje, then part of the Ottoman Empire, she was raised in a devoutly Catholic family. At the age of 18, she moved to Ireland to join the Sisters of Loreto and later to India, where she lived most of her life and carried out her missionary work. On 4 September 2016, she was canonised by the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. The anniversary of her death, 5 September, is now observed as her feast day.
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Gallup, Inc. is an American multinational analytics and advisory company based in Washington, D.C. Founded by George Gallup in 1935, the company became known for its public opinion polls conducted worldwide. Gallup provides analytics and management consulting to organizations globally. In addition the company offers educational consulting, the CliftonStrengths assessment and associated products, and business and management books published by its Gallup Press unit.
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