Enrico Fermi! His understanding of quantum physics was extra ordinary. I am lucky to be a "great grand student" of Fermi. Enrico Fermi taught Ugo Feno, who taught my Prof. Giancarlo Strinati, and luckily some of Fermi's wisdom has been passed down through his students.

The reason I say Fermi is because his studies of a Fermi gas (cloud of electrons), will effectivley lead to our understanding of super conductors. We have made some but they must be kept very cold, we want to make them work at room temperature.

If we achieve this we will have computing power beyond our wildest dreams, transmission of electric world wide without any loss of energy, unprecedented internet speeds, mobile devices better than any computer you have seen..... The list goes on!

This will all be thanks to the deep understanding that Fermi brought with him.

There are 100's of scientists you could mention to be honest but I think this work will lead us to an age of technology so advanced it will change humanity and civilisation.