If you’re still reading, I would love to hear your reasons for including Lincoln. I have the same misgivings as the other commenter above, though I was going to introduce them with levity. (E.g. “I know you like math, Steve, so is that why you included the guy who maximized the wartime deaths of Americans?”)

Don’t get me wrong, I grew up thinking Lincoln was great, just as I thought FDR was great. But when I actually started thinking about things (a la your bathtub drain), I realized: “Wait a second, doesn’t ‘he saved the Union’ describe the same behavior that King George engaged in when the colonists decided to split?”

Hans Christian Anderson, for perhaps the most enduring political insight; The Emperor’s New Clothes.

Schiller; the only writer to come anywhere near Shakespeare with The Wallenstein Trilogy.

George Gershwin must make the popular artist list. As would Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby (a surprisingly good actor too).

I would have included Orson Welles in the director category. He was the best. Plus, he transcends that category, given his work in radio (don’t forget about his War-of-the-Worlds broadcast and the impact that had on the nation) and theater (voodoo Macbeth, gangster Julius Caesar). And even in his movies, you can see examples of his paintings and craftsmanship. Citizen Cane is widely considered the greatest movie ever made, for good reason. Plus, check out is brilliant interviews on Youtube. He was a master at the interview and at storytelling.

Why not include Richard Feynman? He made major contributions to Quantum Physics, including inventing methodological tools that are still used. But what truly makes him great are his insightful and hilarious anecdotes, which have found a broad audience. (His books are big sellers, unlike, say, Einstein’s. People only read about Einstein; they don’t read his actual words.) These anecdotes show how anyone can do physics in everyday life without fancy equipment – just a little curiosity and a willingness to experiment. Finally, he’s a really cool-looking guy. Your wall needs that.

By the way, I think I deserve some credit for being the first (perhaps the only?) one to point out that Henri Cartan was misidentified as Friedrich Hayek. Sure, I didn’t identify him, but I figured out that his image was not that of Hayek.

Lastly, how could you entirely ignore prominent intellectual figures from the judiciary? I have in mind here Richard Posner. He has been a hugely important figure in the legal community; although Coase deserves much credit for his role in starting the influential Law and Economics Movement, it was really Posner who built the field with his ground breaking, “Economic Analysis of the Law.” Furthermore, he has had a tremendous impact on economic theory. A study just came out in the last few days ranking the most influential economic bloggers in terms of scholarly impact, and he was ranked number 3! Not bad for a judge.

For the study results, see http://www.palgrave-journals.com/eej/journal/v36/n1/full/eej200946a.html.

As an economist, he was the first to come up with the quantity theory of money:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetae_cudendae_ratio

If you don’t trust wikipedia, he is also mentioned here:
http://homepage.newschool.edu/het//schools/salamanca.htm

She’s lucky it wasn’t Hilbert…

V.I Arnold – Brilliant mathematician with great communication skills
Felix Klein – Same
Gilbert Strang – His lectures on MIT OCW are worth listening to

Other Science/Math/Tech people I admire

Linus Torvalds – Free software, with no distain for capitalism
Richard Feynman – Incredibly creative, entertaining, great educator
Lewis Fry Richardson – Chose his own path, deserves to be better known

I don’t have a great deal of expertise in the arts but the two greatest composers of all time.

JS Bach
W Mozart

I agree with ScottN that Lincoln doesn’t belong on any list of great people. He was a tyrant and a racist to boot. It would make his moral standing higher if he arrested legislatures, suspended habeus and caused as much American death as anyone in history if it was to end slavery. But it wasn’t, it was to “Preserve the union”, or “Keep southerners paying tariffs to support the Northern states” as was his real intention. Lysander Spooner would have been a better choice for an abolitionist, as would Fredrick Douglas.

Possibly the only President I would include in the list is

Grover Cleveland – Great Classical liberal, only one elected to two nonconsecutive terms.

Surely you’re joking! :)

He’d rank highly on my list as well.