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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/IHad360K_KarmaDammit on 2024-10-05 14:49:45+00:00.

You probably haven’t heard of astrophysicist Michael H. Hart, but if you’re into science fiction at all, you almost certainly have heard of what he’s famous for. He’s best known for his work on the Fermi Paradox, the question of why humanity has never contacted aliens, given that everything we know about the universe suggests that we should have come into contact with them by this point. Although the paradox named after Enrico Fermi, he essentially just brought it up in a casual conversation once, and Hart was the first to actually put together and publish a detailed mathematical analysis of the concept.

Nowadays, the Fermi Paradox is well-known both in scientific circles and within popular culture. Hart’s work on it is enough to make him a reasonably important figure in the field of astrophysics, and a genuinely impressive person even if he were a complete dumbass in every field outside of physics.

Which is probably a good thing, because Michael Hart is a complete dumbass in every field outside of physics.

The 100

After publishing his influential 1975 paper on the Fermi paradox, Hart decided, like a lot of people who are really, really smart about one highly specific topic, that he must also be smart about everything else too. So in 1978, he published a book called “The 100”, intended as a list of the 100 most influential people in history. He wasn’t a historian, of course, but everyone knows that all those historians are just people who weren’t smart enough to get into one of the hard sciences, and that any astrophysicist willing to descend amongst them like a God among mortals will clearly understand their work far better than they ever could. So who made it into his top ten?

Well, in tenth place is Albert Einstein. Fair enough, dude did a lot of sciencey stuff. He’s a pretty big deal.

Ninth is Columbus. Yeah, I can see that, contact between Europe and the Americas is pretty historically important.

Eighth? Gutenberg, who invented the printing press. Yep, books are cool.

Seventh is Cai Lun, who invented paper. Good thing he did that or Gutenberg would have just been sitting around looking sad waiting for someone to find something he could stick in his printing press.

Sixth is Paul the Apostle, fifth is Confucius, fourth is Gautama Buddha. All major figures in their respective religions, makes sense.

Third is Jesus Christ. He would probably have been ranked higher, but Paul’s role in spreading Christianity means he gets a big chunk of the credit. Basically, think of Paul the Apostle as the Ralph Nader to Jesus Christ’s Al Gore as far as this book is concerned.

Second is Isaac Newton. And in first place as the most influential person in human history?

Muhammad, the founder of Islam.

The Reaction

Obviously, there was plenty of controversy over the very existence of such a book, something that Hart went out of his way to emphasize in the second edition, with exactly the level of humility you would expect from someone who decided to write the definitive guide to which historical figures are the most important: “Critics objected that Hart had the nerve not only to select who he thought were the most influential people in history, but also to rank them according to their importance. Needless to say, the critics were wrong”.

As for my opinion? Even beyond the inherent silliness of ranking every historical figure by how influential they are, the list is kind of dumb. Why is Isaac Newton, a physicist whose work was theoretical rather than directly affecting the world, ranked so high when many other important thinkers didn’t even crack the top 100? Why do the founders of religions get highly ranked based on what happens with their religions millennia after their deaths, while the founders of nations don’t get a similar level of credit for the impact of their countries? If Jesus is responsible for everything Christianity has ever done, why isn’t George Washington responsible for everything the USA has ever done?

But the main controversy was over his placement of Muhammad as #1, and even more so the act of placing anybody above Jesus Christ in terms of importance. (Keep in mind that this book was published only twelve years after the "bigger than Jesus" controversy led to mass record burnings and death threats against the Beatles.) This might lead you to suspect that Hart is just a Muslim biased in favor of his own prophet, but he’s actually Jewish. This led to an enormous surge of popularity for Hart’s book among Muslims–look, even non-Muslims recognize how awesome and great Muhammad is! Google his name and a good chunk of the results are from Islamic religious sites or Youtube videos talking about his placement of Muhammad as #1.

But of course, this is a list of the most influential figures in history, definitely not the best or most moral figures in history. Hart put Muhammad first because he had a significant impact, not because he necessarily thinks that it’s a positive impact, or because he likes Muslims. So what does Hart actually think of Muslims?

Well, he hates 'em, along with pretty much every other group that isn’t pure white Judeo-Christians. Surprise, turns out he’s unbelievably racist! I’ve tricked you all. This isn’t just book drama, it’s also white supremacist infighting drama.

The Racist Bit

Between The 100 and his work on the Fermi Paradox, Hart had become reasonably famous by the mid-90s, enough that American Renaissance invited him to give speeches at a number of their conferences. If you’re not familiar with American Renaissance, they’re a white nationalist organization willing to just barely pretend they’re not Nazis, at least most of the time. Hart, who you’ll remember is Jewish, was apparently gullible enough to believe them. All went well for about a decade, with Hart giving rousing speeches on the necessity of turning a quarter of the USA into a whites-only utopia, apparently under the impression that the people he was talking to would let him in if that ever happened.

This worked out until the 2006 conference, when Hart brought along his friend Herschel Elias, a first-time guest who wasn’t too sure about this whole white nationalist thing. Hart assured him that these people weren’t Nazis, and that they had absolutely no hatred towards Jews, after which David Duke, former grand wizard of the KKK, stepped up to the stage and immediately proved him wrong with an anti-Semitic rant about “a power in the world that dominates our media, influences our government and that has led to the internal destruction of our will and our spirit”.

Hart stood up, screamed that Duke was a “fucking Nazi”, and ran out of the room. Duke’s next words are unfortunately lost to history, but I’m guessing they were something along the lines of “no shit, Sherlock”.

Afterwards, Hart organized his own conference dedicated to talking about the inferiority of every minority group except Jews, which seems to have had no real impact on anything, and with a poster that just screams “graphic design is my passion”.

Although his work on the Fermi paradox is significant, Hart’s various controversies mean that he’s not particularly well-known or admired in the field of astrophysics, or even in science-fiction fandom, where the Fermi Paradox is a famous and popular trope. He’s a classic example of someone who’s unbelievably smart in an incredibly specific field, while simultaneously being too stupid to realize that the Grand Wizard of the KKK might be a bit anti-Semitic. Although the term “Fermi-Hart paradox” is occasionally used, it’s unlikely to become popular any time soon. As for The 100, although it sold very well (60,000 copies by 1992 and probably many more by this point), it’s not really taken seriously by anyone as a work of history, and its main legacy is taking up shelf space next to Guinness World Records and Ripley’s Believe It or Not in hundreds of used book stores.