I was thinking Tesla as well, but he died penniless and many say crazy - and I blame Edison a lot for that. Pioneers like Lumière, Chaplin, and others of cinema are favorites - Walt Disney is another - others are the biographies of the Robber Barons (oh, excuse me, they like to be referred to as "Captains of Industry")...just too many to think of one in particular...

But of course, we cannot go with out mentioning one of the most stellar autobiographies of recent times - I speak (of course) of the seminal work: Miley Cyrus - Miles To Go - (for anyone who has obviously has lived such a rich and storied life experience at the age of 16, must have much to tell us. :rolleyes

Anyway...since you prefaced the question Mark - you were supposed to go first :p

I would agree Edison had a huge impact on how we 'see' today, but I also think part of his genius was in the team that he assembled and would subsequently take a lot of credit for...his initial applications for the products he did come to invent were sometimes to me laughable, as in the thought you could use the phonograph to record a departing loved-one's voice before they die, so you could play it back later (kind of a morbid thought :p) - but the team friendship of Edison and Ford together made quite a powerhouse.
They were both driven (no puns intended )

Disney was the same way, in that he had a vision, and put together a great team to realize it.

Yep, still reading Henry Fords autobiography, He held Edison in high regard!

And when the 1929 stock market crash happened, he, (Henry Ford) had over one hundred million in cash in Government banks on hand, because unlike his son, he refused to invest it into the stock market, or other things that produced nothing!

And eventhough he did work people to death he did create revolutionary things!

Pity Detroit is a bit of a ghostown today!

It was fast becoming the powerhouse of America in the 18,00,s.

Shane

These are always "tricky questions", especially when applied to inventors and their inventions.

The reality, when dealing with "history of science", is that normally many different people were working on the same thing, or very closely related things, at the same time, and it was a question of "who got there first".

My initial instincts on seeing the question were Francis Crick and James Watson, for the discovery of the structure of DNA and everything that followed from it. But the reality is that if Crick and Watson hadn't existed, it would have been Aaron Klug and others, within a few years, anyway (within a few months, according to some accounts). And the history of scientific advances is packed with countless other similar instances, too.

But these are perhaps not so much "inspirational biographies", as much as "inspirational discoveries", anyway? :confused:

I think Winston Churchill has to be high on my list ...

He was a great guy. Henry Ford offered him a high-paying job with Ford, but Carver turned it down. Carver spent his entire adult life living in a small room on campus, when he had many other higher-paying options.