I added most of the customary people.
Plus Ben Bernanke (he saved the world economy in 2008-2009, with his expansive monetary policy), Mario Draghi (he saved the euro and the EU, with his monetary police and famous speech), Shinya Yamanaka (work on malaria saved millions of people) and Tu Youyou (stem cells: Nobel 2012).
I'll add more people based on good argumentation or three votes.
I'm not going to be neutral. I voted for Elon Musk.
I have posted some text critical of Elon Musk's plans for the colonization of Mars.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/spacex-and-the-prospects-of-mars-colonization-1741917https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-dimensions-of-spacexs-starship-1-and-2-and-mars-colonization-5188448But I left clear that what he is doing with SpaceX is very important and I'm following his achievements with interest and applause.
I have little doubt that Musk is currently the most important person alive.
Not because (according with some calculations) he is currently the richest person alive.
Not because of what he is doing with SpaceX. I doubt SpaceX will change the life of many people in the next 20 years. Read the above posts.
Currently, the main reason for my vote is what he achieved with Tesla.
No, it's not because Tesla it self. Tesla doesn't sell enough cars to make a big change on it self.
Musk main achievement with Tesla was to force all the other major companies to start creating and selling electric cars. This will make a dent on carbon emissions, since global warming is our main threat.
This won't be enough to save us from trouble. Far from it. But it's a start.
Another major action from Musk was his promise to pay a big reward to any developer of a cost effective way to capture carbon from the atmosphere.
Basically, currently, this technology is the only one that can save us from the serious consequences of global warming.
It's more than clear that we are not going to be able to reduce substantially carbon emissions and we are in serious trouble.
A few countries will meet their promises targets. Mainly the demographically decadents, like the Europeans, Japan, Korea.
For the same reason, perhaps, also Russia, even if they don't seem to be very concerned with the problem.
In due time, maybe also the Chinese. They are in the same boat of the demographically decadents, about to starting to lose population.
But forget about India and specially the Africans countries. They are still increasing their populations. The second ones by a lot. Their emissions are going to explode.
We are basically in serious trouble. Unless we start capturing carbon from the atmosphere faster than we are emitting it.
But we have to start now spending a lot building better systems, because the current ones are a disaster: costly and slow.
Again Musk initiative might have an important impact, since our bright governments are still blind to the need for serious investments in this area.
His Neuralink might also change the world, because of the risks of AI:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/poll-is-the-creation-of-artificial-superinteligence-dangerous-1538764