The Twenty Most Influential Businessmen Of All Time
Edited By Michael Noer 7.29.05

The Twenty Most Influential Businessmen Of All Time #1: Henry Ford #2: J.P. Morgan #3: John D. Rockefeller #4: Andrew Carnegie #5: Sam Walton

Henry Ford brought the car to the masses. Henry J. Kaiser fathered the HMO. J.P. Morgan saved Wall Street. Ray Kroc changed the way we eat.

But who was the most influential, in terms of the way that business is conducted today?

To rank the most influential businessmen of all time—and yes, they are all men—we had Joel Mokyr, a professor of economics and history at Northwestern University and the editor in chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, come up with a list of candidates. The only prerequisite was that the nominees no longer be leading active business lives. In the end, all the candidates were, in fact, dead.

Then, last spring, we polled Forbes.com readers for their choice. Nearly 10,000 people responded. We then polled ten senior editors at Forbes.com and asked them to rank the top 20 of the candidates. The readers' and editors' votes were then averaged for the final ranking.

Click here to view the 20 most influential businessmen of all time.

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