Who are John Mather, George Smoot, Roger Kornberg…

Who are John Mather, George Smoot, Roger Kornberg, Andrew Fire, Craig Mello, Orhan Pamuk, Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank, Edmund Phelps? Anyone?

No idea? Not even who one of those people might be? Really? Well, I had no clue either, sadly.

This is the list of 2006 Nobel Prize winners… pretty significant people, when you think that the list includes the likes of Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Mikhail Gorbachev and Rudyard Kipling to name a few of the historic ones the average person has heard of. These people are doing something positive for the world, and yet there are many whose names on the long list of prize recipients are merely names.

What about Dr. Charles Nicolle (1866-1936) a French bacteriologist who earned the 1928 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his identification of lice as the transmitter of epidemic typhus?

Then there’s Cordell Hull (1871-1955), the longest-serving U.S. Secretary of State in the Administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Hull received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945 for his role in establishing the United Nations, and was referred to by President Roosevelt as the “Father of the UN”.

And what about the youngest ever Nobel Prize winner Sir William Lawrence Bragg (1890-1971), born in my hometown Adelaide, and attended University of Adelaide? He shared the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics with his father for his work on the analysis of crystal structure by means of x-rays.

Amazing, yet unknown people. And I am amazed, actually, that I had never heard of William Bragg, given that he is from my hometown, Adelaide.

So let me rattle off another list … Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, David Beckham, Kevin Costner, Beyonce Knowles, Nicole Ritchie, Pamela Anderson, Anna Nicole Smith, Ludacris. I bet almost everyone in the western world knows who these people are, probably know who they’re married to, and any previous lovers, not to mention why they are in the news right now. Admittedly these people have talent too, sometimes it’s questionable, but still, they’re humans like the rest of us. What’s sad is that as a race we focus on these people, who really are just average people with average problems that are very public.

The people who make the headlines are the ones who seem to be ones we should be ignoring. The ones who don’t make the headlines are the ones who seem to be making a difference.

Some of the people who have made big positive impacts in many people’s lives like Dale Carnegie and Anthony Robbins learned by reading the biographies of successful people… like Ghandi, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr, Mother Teresa to mention a few. These are people who inspired others to greatness and led by example.

Leading by example is the hardest thing of all, especially with a lack of public figures who do lead by example. It seems the ones who do live quiet lives, and few know of their existence.

We owe it to ourselves to learn about the great people of history. Learn from their triumphs and failures. Learn that there is far more opportunity that awaits us, if only we were to scratch the surface. As a population we spend so much time focused on the miserable lives of celebrities and the neglect we have for our own lives means that they end up mirroring the sadness celebrities face.

Take on this day as though it could be your last. Follow in the steps of greatness and move life forward. You’ll never look back!

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