History is often told through famous leaders and inventors, but countless ‘unknown’ heroes have made crucial contributions that changed the world for the better. These 10 individuals deserve more recognition for their courageous or groundbreaking actions.
1. Stanislav Petrov (Prevented nuclear war)
On September 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov was the duty officer in a Soviet early-warning bunker when the system indicated that multiple nuclear missiles had been launched from the US. Protocol required him to initiate a large-scale nuclear counterattack.
However, Petrov doubted the system’s reliability, judged it to be a false alarm (which it turned out to be), and went against his orders.
His cool head and refusal to blindly follow protocol possibly prevented a global nuclear war.
2. Henrietta Lacks (Unwitting medical pioneer)
Henrietta Lacks was an African-American woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951. Without her knowledge or consent, doctors took cells from her tumor. These cells, known as HeLa cells, proved to be ‘immortal’: they could divide indefinitely outside the body.
HeLa cells have since been crucial for numerous medical breakthroughs, including the development of the polio vaccine, cancer research, gene therapy, and IVF. Henrietta Lacks’ family knew nothing about this for a long time and lived in poverty.
3. Maurice Hilleman (Saved millions of lives through vaccines)
Microbiologist Maurice Hilleman is considered one of the most important scientists who worked on vaccines. He developed more than 40 vaccines, including 8 of the 14 vaccines now routinely recommended for children (including measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, hepatitis A and B).
His work is estimated to have saved more lives than that of any other medical scientist in the 20th century. He worked tirelessly and often out of the spotlight.
4. Ignaz Semmelweis (Pioneer of hand hygiene)
The Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis discovered in the mid-19th century that hand disinfection by doctors and nurses drastically reduced mortality from childbed fever. He determined that doctors were transferring germs from autopsies to women giving birth.
Despite clear evidence, his theory was rejected and ridiculed by the medical community of his time. Semmelweis became frustrated, suffered a nervous breakdown, and died in a psychiatric hospital.
Only later was the importance of hand hygiene widely recognized, partly thanks to the work of Pasteur and Lister.
5. Norman Borlaug (Father of the Green Revolution)
Agronomist Norman Borlaug led initiatives that transformed agricultural production worldwide, known as the Green Revolution. He developed high-yielding, disease-resistant wheat varieties and introduced modern farming techniques in Mexico, Pakistan, and India.
His work is credited with saving potentially a billion people from starvation. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 but remains relatively unknown to the general public.
6. Claudette Colvin (The unknown Rosa Parks)
Nine months before Rosa Parks’ famous refusal to give up her bus seat, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin did exactly the same thing in Montgomery, Alabama. On March 2, 1955, she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger and was arrested.
Although her act was courageous, civil rights leaders chose not to make her case the symbol of the bus boycott, possibly due to her young age, darker skin color, and the fact that she became pregnant out of wedlock later that year.
Rosa Parks was seen as a more ‘respectable’ face for the movement, but Colvin’s action was an important precursor.
7. Vasili Arkhipov (Prevented nuclear escalation during Cuban Missile Crisis)
During the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Vasili Arkhipov was a senior officer aboard the Soviet submarine B-59, which was being hunted by US Navy ships. The submarine carried a nuclear torpedo, and the captain, believing war had broken out, wanted to launch it.
According to procedure, authorization was needed from three officers. Arkhipov was the only one who refused to give his consent, calmed the captain, and persuaded him to surface. His refusal likely prevented a nuclear confrontation that could have escalated the crisis into a catastrophe.
8. James Harrison (The man with the golden arm)
James Harrison, an Australian, is estimated to have saved over 2.4 million babies. His blood plasma contains a rare, powerful antibody (Anti-D) essential for treating Rhesus disease, a condition where a pregnant woman’s blood attacks her unborn child.
After receiving a blood transfusion himself as a teenager, Harrison donated his plasma over 1100 times for more than 60 years (from age 18 to 81). The Anti-D immunoglobulin vaccine was developed from his plasma.
9. Irena Sendler (Saved 2500 Jewish children)
Irena Sendler was a Polish Catholic social worker who headed the children’s section of Żegota, a Polish underground resistance organization, during World War II. She ingeniously smuggled approximately 2500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto.
She provided them with false identity papers and placed them with Polish families, orphanages, and convents. She kept coded lists of their original identities, hoping to reunite them with family after the war. She was captured and tortured by the Gestapo but revealed nothing. Her work remained largely unknown for decades.
10. Joseph Lister (Pioneer of antiseptic surgery)
Building on Pasteur’s work on germs, British surgeon Joseph Lister realized that post-surgical infections were caused by microorganisms. He introduced the use of carbolic acid (phenol) as an antiseptic to disinfect surgical instruments, the surgeon’s hands, and the wound itself.
His methods led to a dramatic decrease in post-operative infections and mortality, laying the foundation for modern antiseptic and aseptic surgery. Although he received recognition, his name is less known than that of, for example, Pasteur, but his impact on medicine was revolutionary.
