François Englert, Peter Higgs, and Fabiola Gianotti
For unraveling the mysteries of the universe.
François Englert, Peter Higgs, and Fabiola Gianotti
For unraveling the mysteries of the universe.
François Englert, Peter Higgs, and Fabiola Gianotti
For unraveling the mysteries of the universe.
The Mars Rover Team
For showing us another world.
Chris Hadfield
For making manned space flight cool again.
Joshua Oppenheimer
For documenting a forgotten genocide.
Paul Salopek
For telling the story of humanity by retracing its footsteps.
Bassem Youssef
For demonstrating the political importance of satire.
Richard Mosse
For seeing war through a new lens.
Zanele Muholi
For photographing hidden lives.
George Packer
For unmasking the ugliness of American inequality.
Thomas Friedman
For popularizing the "Chinese dream."
Hannah Gay, Katherine Luzuriaga, and Deborah Persaud
For bringing us closer to a cure for HIV.
Hannah Gay, Katherine Luzuriaga, and Deborah Persaud
For bringing us closer to a cure for HIV.
Hannah Gay, Katherine Luzuriaga, and Deborah Persaud
For bringing us closer to a cure for HIV.
Michael Faye, Paul Niehaus, Jeremy Shapiro, and Rohit Wanchoo
For trusting the poor to spend their money wisely.
Michael Faye, Paul Niehaus, Jeremy Shapiro, and Rohit Wanchoo
For trusting the poor to spend their money wisely.
Michael Faye, Paul Niehaus, Jeremy Shapiro, and Rohit Wanchoo
For trusting the poor to spend their money wisely.
Michael Faye, Paul Niehaus, Jeremy Shapiro, and Rohit Wanchoo
For trusting the poor to spend their money wisely.
Caroline Buckee
For using metadata to fight disease.
Anand Grover
For going to the mat with Big Pharma.
Homi Kharas
For charting a path to the end of poverty.
Sanjay Basu and David Stuckler
For warning that austerity can be deadly.
Sanjay Basu and David Stuckler
For warning that austerity can be deadly.
Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir
For showing how scarcity changes the way you think about everything.
Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir
For showing how scarcity changes the way you think about everything.
Erica Chenoweth
For proving Gandhi right.
Mark Dybul
For revitalizing the world's war on infectious disease.
Haifaa Al Mansour
For quietly breaking the kingdom's gender barriers.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
For defying stereotypes on two continents.
NoViolet Bulawayo
For giving voice to the "born-free" generation.
Mohsin Hamid
For painting a disquieting picture of Asia's rise.
Zaha Hadid
For believing every country deserves beautiful buildings.
Jia Zhangke
For using art to show how inequality breeds violence.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
For subverting the traditions of Western art.
Tamara Chalabi and Jonathan Watkins
For displaying Iraq's "soul and grace" to the world.
Tamara Chalabi and Jonathan Watkins
For displaying Iraq's "soul and grace" to the world.
Jeff Bezos
For betting on old media.
Wang Jianlin
For dreaming of a Chinese Hollywood.
Noura Al Kaabi
For building an Arabic-language media empire.
Saad Mohseni
For believing that entertainment can change a country for the better.
Mark Zuckerberg
For envisioning a stripped-down internet.
Wang Gongquan
For defying the unwritten rules of China's business elite.
Babak Nivi and Naval Ravikant
For throwing open the gates to venture capital.
Babak Nivi and Naval Ravikant
For throwing open the gates to venture capital.
Stephen Schwarzman
For creating the scholarship for the Chinese century.
Welcome to our fifth annual special issue featuring FP's 100 Leading Global Thinkers.
Each autumn, Foreign Policy's editors start compiling this remarkable list of people who, over the past year, have made a measurable difference in politics, business, technology, the arts, the sciences, and more. To get the ball rolling, we reach out to wonks, writers, experts, and policymakers on six continents for nominees. We look at the year's biggest stories and scour the weird and arcane from obscure journals. Then, armed with thousands of names, we sit down to hash out the list.
Admittedly, not every one of our Global Thinkers is an angel. There are a few we'd prefer were a little less successful, a few whose goals and motivations are mixed at best, and plenty who, though well-intentioned, may not achieve what they set out to. But the vast majority are not only accomplished—they are affirming. They are doing nothing less than bringing peace, protecting the planet, and pushing the boundaries of the possible. Their achievements are the reward of talent and dedication, and we all benefit.
It has been a big year—full of amazing stories, stunning revelations, and groundbreaking ideas. Enjoy our Leading Global Thinkers issue, and be sure to let us know what you think.
The Surveillance State
This year, leaks of classified U.S. government documents rewrote our understanding not only of the American intelligence apparatus,
but of the possibilities and pitfalls of the Internet writ large. The statesmen, hackers, and activists in this category of Global Thinkers are working on the bleeding edge of the digital revolution, where a battle is being fought over who will control the defining tool of the 21st century. They represent those seeking to harness the
web in the name of national security, those working to bring it under the letter of the law, and those hoping to liberate it in the name of human freedom.
Machines of Loving Grace: I’d rather risk becoming a terrorist’s victim than live under a surveillance state
by William T. Vollmann
Ron Wyden
For insisting that the law should never be secret.
Dilma Rousseff
For confronting Washington and its spies.
Kevin Mandia
For identifying the perpetrators of China's cyber-offensive.
Dmitri Alperovitch
For leveling the cyber playing field.
Moxie Marlinspike
For making it harder for the NSA—and Google— to spy on you.
Edward Snowden
For exposing the reach of government spying.
Jesselyn Radack
For championing the rights of whistleblowers.
Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras
For giving Edward Snowden a voice.
Keith Alexander
For masterminding the surveillance state.
The Decision-Makers
High office—whether elected, appointed, or simply taken—comes with power. But that is not a sufficient precondition for success. Among the world's
hundreds of regents, presidents, chairmen, ministers, and secretaries, only a few really stand out for the risks they have taken and the changes they have made. Their impact is not always uniformly positive and sometimes their gambits are not rewarded, but their influence cannot be denied. In this category, we acknowledge leaders who have shown the courage to
lay their reputations on the line, the cunning to seize opportunities, or the wisdom to recognize that the worst enemy of the political establishment is often inertia.
Hassan Rouhani
For opening a door.
The Kerry Doctrine: The Secretary of State’s go-big-or-go-home foreign policy
by Douglas Brinkley
John Kerry
For betting on Middle East peace when no one else would.
Wang Qishan
For insisting that China's elites are not above the law.
Shinzo Abe
For reviving the Japanese economy.
Angela Merkel
For being the disciplinarian that Europe needs.
Mario Draghi
For defending the eurozone with one hand tied behind his back.
Enrique Peña Nieto
For shaking up Mexico's moribund institutions.
José Mujica
For redefining the Latin American left.
Cécile Kyenge
For combating Europe's persistent xenophobia.
Christine Lagarde
For giving Europe some tough economic love.
Li Keqiang
For taking on China's biggest economic challenges.
Juan Manuel Santos
For risking everything to end his country's civil war.
Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lavrov
For re-establishing Russia as a global power.
Ben Bernanke
For rattling the markets in the name of recovery.
No Quiet on the Western Front: The Eurozone lived to fight another day. But a new battle is brewing.
by Daniel Altman
François Hollande
For keeping the flame of humanitarian interventionism alive.
Aminata Touré
For articulating a progressive vision of African leadership.
The Challengers
Inertia is as powerful a force in society and politics as it is in physics, and effecting change can be demanding and discouraging. But that hasn't stopped these
Global Thinkers, who have found innovative ways to shake up the status quo. Of course, challenging the establishment does not automatically put one on the side of angels—the entrants in this category have earned inclusion for specific efforts, not their overall worldviews. Most, however, are broadly pushing the powers that be toward justice. They have sought to revive decrepit institutions,
protect the rights of ordinary citizens from predatory governments, and expose the laziness that often supports conventional wisdom. Their efforts have made them forces to be reckoned with.
Arvind Kejriwal
For leading a campaign to clean up India's capital.
Nigel Farage and Alexis Tsipras
For attacking the European establishment from the right and the left.
Pope Francis
For bringing the Catholic Church into the 21st century.
Yair Lapid
For appealing to Israel's political center.
Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert Pollin
For discovering a whopper of an error.
Rand Paul
For challenging America's hawks—in both parties.
Joko Widodo
For governing by hitting the streets.
Resurrection: Pope Francis brings the freshness of the gospel to the Catholic Church
by E.J. Dionne Jr.
Tamara Morshakova
For standing her ground against the Kremlin.
Alexey Navalny
For defying the dark heart of the Russian state.
David Graeber and James C. Scott
For showing what anarchism can offer the world.
The Naturals
What does humanity's future hold? In this era of climate change and booming populations, it's an all-too-serious
question—one the Global Thinkers in this category have each addressed. They have crunched the numbers to gauge just how close to environmental catastrophe we are. They have identified ways to slow the damage we are inflicting on both our surroundings and ourselves. They have restored wastelands to their original beauty.
They are helping humanity become a better steward of the planet and, in the process, ensuring that our future will be long and fruitful.
David Lobell
For helping farmers feed the world.
Thomas Peterson, Martin Hoerling, Peter Stott, and Stephanie Herring
For proving that the devastation of Superstorm Sandy was partly our fault.
Ellen MacArthur
For jumpstarting the circular economy.
Azzam Alwash
For saving the Garden of Eden.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
For showing that humanity is on the brink of catastrophe.
Todd Stern and Xie Zhenhua
For showing that climate policy agreements really can be reached.
Jessica Gordon, Sylvia McAdam, Sheelah McLean, and Nina Wilson
For demanding that Canada not leave its First Nations behind.
The Innovators
The modern world changes quickly in no small part because technology keeps bringing us new ways to do more, do it better, and do it faster. That is
not always a good thing: Far from ushering in the utopia so often promised by Silicon Valley boosterism, 2013 brought us all too many reminders that, in the wrong hands, technology has a dark side. But the Global Thinkers in this category have shown us the power, goodness, and sheer amazement that innovation can bring. From efforts to explore the vastness of the
solar system to machines that coax intelligence from the tiniest of particles, their work has given even the world-weary that most precious of gifts: wonderment.
Chris Anderson
For kick-starting the consumer drone trend.
Elon Musk
For making sci-fi real.
The Rocketeer: Forget Tesla. Forget the Hyperloop. Elon Musk is all about Space.
by Michael Belfiore
Thad Starner
For preaching the gospel of wearable computing.
Geordie Rose
For pioneering the development of quantum computers.
Xiaolin Zheng
For giving us solar power anywhere, anytime.
Jim Reeves and Martin Riddiford
For using gravity to light the world.
Theodore Berger
For making memories. Literally.
The Global Conversation: What it looks like when a supercomputer maps the world’s newsmakers.
by Kalev Leetaru
Kalev Leetaru
For building a tool that could predict the future.
Bre Pettis
For revolutionizing the way we make things.
The Advocates
From corruption to sexual violence, homophobia to crimes against humanity, the Global Thinkers in this category have tackled some of the
world's most pressing and intransigent problems. They have used speeches, protests, lawsuits, and more to thrust their ideas into the public spotlight and demand change. Some have defended international law or challenged foreign powers; others have battled wrongdoing in their own countries. Some have succeeded in changing policy and been
feted for their accomplishments; others have been stigmatized or even imprisoned. But all of them have pushed boundaries in the name of progress.
Mary Jennings Hegar, Zoe Bedell, Colleen Farrell, and Jennifer Hunt
For shattering the brass ceiling.
Julieta Castellanos
For fighting the system that killed her son.
Thant Myint-U
For shaping Yangon's future by preserving its past.
Alexey Davydov and Igor Kochetkov
For fighting Russia's state-sponsored homophobia.
Pu Zhiqiang
For daring to take on China's J. Edgar Hoover.
Gulalai and Saba Ismail
For empowering Pakistani girls.
Urvashi Butalia and Kavita Krishnan
For exposing the roots of India's rampant sexual violence.
Fatou Bensouda
For prosecuting the world's worst criminals.
Navi Pillay
For refusing to let the world forget the human toll of Syria's crisis.
Xu Zhiyong
For promoting people power as an antidote to corruption.
Malala Yousafzai
For wielding uncommon courage and wisdom.
Farea Al-Muslimi
For appealing to the better angels of U.S. foreign policy.
Hossam Bahgat and Heba Morayef
For holding fast to the promise of Egypt's revolution.
The Chroniclers
In an age when "search" is a browser function that can call up more information in an instant than an ancient scholar could
accumulate in a lifetime, it is easy to mistake data for knowledge. The Global Thinkers in this category put that hubris in perspective, showing us novel ways of understanding the world and our place in it. They have traveled to jungles and deserts, near-Earth orbit and the Martian surface. With reporting that moved us,
photography that shook our view of conflict, and research that exposed the very fabric of physical existence, they have helped us understand what it means to be human.
Paul Salopek
For telling the story of humanity by retracing its footsteps.
François Englert, Peter Higgs, and Fabiola Gianotti
For unraveling the mysteries of the universe.
George Packer
For unmasking the ugliness of American inequality.
The Design and Fall of Civilizations: The technology uncovering humanity’s past-and perhaps its future.
by Douglas Preston
Richard Mosse
For seeing war through a new lens.
Bassem Youssef
For demonstrating the political importance of satire.
Damian Evans, Bill Benenson, and Steve Elkins
For using lasers to discover and map ancient cities.
Chris Hadfield
For making manned space flight cool again.
Thomas Friedman
For popularizing the "Chinese dream."
Joshua Oppenheimer
For documenting a forgotten genocide.
The Mars Rover Team
For showing us another world.
Zanele Muholi
For photographing hidden lives.
The Healers
More than 1 billion people live in poverty—that is, on less than $1.25 per day. The death toll in Syria's civil war has risen to over
100,000. About 3.3 billion people are at risk for contracting malaria, and over 16 million people with HIV cannot access the drugs that combat the virus. In short, much is broken in the world. From developing a global anti-poverty agenda to ensuring access to medicines to explaining how nonviolence really can foster change, the Global
Thinkers in this category—doctors, lawyers, researchers, entrepreneurs—are working to heal the wounds that afflict so many.
Caroline Buckee
For using metadata to fight disease.
Anand Grover
For going to the mat with Big Pharma.
Michael Faye, Paul Niehaus, Jeremy Shapiro, and Rohit Wanchoo
For trusting the poor to spend their money wisely.
Hannah Gay, Katherine Luzuriaga, and Deborah Persaud
For bringing us closer to a cure for HIV.
Homi Kharas
For charting a path to the end of poverty.
Erica Chenoweth
For proving Gandhi right.
Sanjay Basu and David Stuckler
For warning that austerity can be deadly.
Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir
For showing how scarcity changes the way you think about everything.
Mark Dybul
For revitalizing the world's war on infectious disease.
The Artists
There is a place for artistic creation purely in the name of beauty: Ars gratia artis, the saying goes—art for the sake of art.
But as the Global Thinkers in this category show, art also has the power to make a striking political statement or reflect, even define, a moment in history. These artists have used brush strokes, words, images, and more to shock the senses and, in some cases, the sensibilities. They have defied the rules of artistic forms,
as well as social norms of gender, race, and class. From China to Saudi Arabia, Britain to Azerbaijan, they have shown that art doesn't just matter—it is vital.
Haifaa Al Mansour
For quietly breaking the kingdom's gender barriers.
NoViolet Bulawayo
For giving voice to the "born-free" generation.
Tamara Chalabi and Jonathan Watkins
For displaying Iraq's "soul and grace" to the world.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
For subverting the traditions of Western art.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
For defying stereotypes on two continents.
Jia Zhangke
For using art to show how inequality breeds violence.
Zaha Hadid
For believing every country deserves beautiful buildings.
Mohsin Hamid
For painting a disquieting picture of Asia's rise.
The Moguls
What should one do with several million dollars? What about several billion? The Global Thinkers in
this category have many different answers: assemble a media empire, build a new Hollywood an ocean away from California, take on repressive regimes, help tech start-ups get on their feet, bring the Internet to every corner of the globe. Together, they show that the benefit of
great wealth and status is the ability to define one's mission and reinvent it again and again.
Wang Jianlin
For dreaming of a Chinese Hollywood.
Jeff Bezos
For betting on old media.
Noura Al Kaabi
For building an Arabic-language media empire.
Wang Gongquan
For defying the unwritten rules of China's business elite.
Saad Mohseni
For believing that entertainment can change a country for the better.
Stephen Schwarzman
For creating the scholarship for the Chinese century.
