Top 100 Public Intellectuals: Cool Facts

V.S. Ramachandran, India
Neuroscientist

V.S. Ramachandran is best known for his work on neurological syndromes such as phantom limbs, autism, neglect, and his pioneering work on synesthesia, a condition where the subject sees numbers, letters, and symbols as colors, even when they are in black and white form. He also invented the mirror box, his contribution to fixing phantom limb symptoms. Ramachandran was referred to by Richard Dawkins as “The Marco Polo of neuroscience” and by Newsweek magazine as one of the “hundred most prominent people to watch” in the 21st century. He was also given the title of Padma Bhushan, awarded to recognize distinguished service to the nation, by the President of India in 2007.


Richard Posner, United States
Judge, author

Richard Posner is currently a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He was named in a 2004 poll by Legal Affairs magazine as one of the top twenty legal thinkers in the U.S. and is very well known for his shocking positions on a variety of important issues. A journalist for The Washington Post wrote that he believes Posner will never sit on the Supreme court despite his “obvious brilliance”, because his positions are seen by some as “outrageous”. For example, he argued that buying and selling babies on the free market would lead to better outcomes than our present situation – government-regulated adoption. He is also known for joking about support for the legalization of marijuana and LSD.


Daniel Dennett, United States
Philosopher

Daniel Dennett is currently a professor of philosophy at Tufts University who describes himself as an autodidact, more of a self-taught person than a school-trained person. He claims to have introduced the first Frisbee to the U.K. while he was at Oxford and is an avid sailor. Much like ethologist Richard Dawkins, his views on evolution are identified as being adaptationist, a set of methods for distinguishing the products of adaptation from traits that arise through other processes. In 2006, Dennett was hospitalized due to an aortic dissection and was given a new aorta. He then wrote an essay with a firsthand account of his health problems, his gratitude toward the doctors and scientists who saved his life, and his lack of a deathbed conversion.