The 25 Smartest People of the Decade

Who are the greatest minds of the past 10 years? The Daily Beast convened a panel of moguls, academics—and more than 40 credentialed geniuses—to settle the matter once and for all.

It was a decade that most will rank among the worst ever, book-ended by a tragic terrorist attack and an epic financial meltdown, with a lot of bitter politics and debt-fueled spending in between.
But there was also a lot of brilliance: genius thinking that transformed information, politics, business, and medicine. For all the pain and the angst, centuries from now historians may well measure the last 10 years by our biggest brains and the transformative changes they set in motion. The Daily Beast thought we’d help them with a present-day measure of the greatest minds of our times: the 25 smartest people of the decade.