Specialist, diverse and—more than anything—practical, Prospect readers’ selection of the top 10 global thinkers of 2021 confirms that the idea of a public intellectual is being remade. The top thinker of all, Jacob Hanna (profiled on the previous page) embodies the shift: he’s a non-binary Palestinian biologist who grows mouse embryos, partly in the hope of facilitating lab-grown human organs for transplant.
Hanna’s edge was narrow—unlike over the last two years (when Kurdish mathematician Caucher Birkar and Kerala’s revered health minister, KK Shailaja, won) there was no sign of an organised campaign of votes. His closest rival, Italian theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, is also a scientist. As indeed are Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci, the married Turkish-German couple who developed a Covid-19 vaccine and jointly fill the number five slot. There’s a strong scientific aspect, too, in the work of public health expert Devi Sridhar (No 8) and European “rewilder” Frans Schepers (No 9).