Steve Jobs joins George Washington, others in TIME's most influential Americans list
The TIME report names 20 "trailblazers, visionaries and cultural ambassadors who defined a nation" in chronological order with Jobs rounding out the list as the most recent "influential American."
TIME calls Jobs the "high priest of the computer age" and runs through a brief history of Apple and its products, and the tech guru's ultimately life-ending battle with pancreatic cancer.
From Steve Jobs' short TIME bio:
There was always something of the monkish seeker about Steve Jobs, from his days as a part-time student at Reed College in Oregon, through his Wanderjahr in Asia to his pursuit of perfection in the dazzling products he and his colleagues created.
Jobs was a visionary whose great genius was for design: he pushed and pushed to make the interface between computers and people elegant, simple and delightful. He always claimed his goal was to create products that were âinsanely great.â Mission accomplished.
The usual suspects like Abraham Lincoln, Henry Ford and Martin Luther King Jr. populate the rest of the top-20 while noted pugilist and outspoken racial equality proponent Mohammed Ali is both the only athlete featured and last living list member.
TIME's 20 Most Influential Americans
Influential Americans
George Washington
Thomas Jefferson
Sacagawea, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
Abraham Lincoln
Sitting Bull
Alexander G. Bell
Thomas Edison
Henry Ford
Wright Brothers
Margaret Sanger
Albert Einstein
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Louis Armstrong
James Watson
Martin Luther King Jr.
Muhammad Ali
Steve Jobs