Following are the nominations for The Chromys, listed alphabetically. Click the ‘See More’ button to view the dedicated page on each person. This may contain videos, PDFs and more images, as well as more in-depth explanation of who they are and what they have done.
Amma is a Hindu spiritual leader. Her real name is Mata Amritanandamayi but she is known affectionately as Amma, or "Mother".
One of her senior disciples says, "Mother is an extraordinary saint, in the number of people she intentionally instills spirituality into - even to extent of hugging every single person who comes to her. Basically, every one is potentially what Mother is. Mother's presence is invoking that reality (of divinity) within that person."
Oscar-winning actress, professional model, daughter of Academy Award-winning actor Jon Voight, and listed on countless “most beautiful women” lists, Angelina Jolie trained and performed at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute following her mother Marcheline Bertrand, who had studied with Lee Strasberg directly. A mother to six children and a natural beauty both inside and out, she needs no introduction as humanitarian spokes person to the world.
Jolie first became personally aware of worldwide humanitarian crises while filming Tomb Raider in Cambodia. She eventually turned to The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the agency mandated to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide, for more information on international trouble spots.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (B&MGF or the Gates Foundation) is the largest transparently operated private foundation in the world, founded by Bill and Melinda Gates. It is "driven by the interests and passions of the Gates family". The primary aims of the foundation are, globally, to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty, and in America, to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology. The foundation, based in Seattle, Washington, is controlled by its three trustees: Bill Gates, Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett.
Award-winning lead singer and front man for U2, one of the most successful and highly regarded rock bands in history, Bono uses his immense popularity and influence to draw attention to the crises of poverty worldwide and HIV/AIDS in Africa. Gaining access to the world's most powerful politicians he has almost single handedly drawn public attention to debt burdens in the poorest of countries, helping to get wealthier nations to forgive billions of dollars of debt. He also works tirelessly to build greater worldwide response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic facing Africa.
The Argentine-born Daniel Barenboim is a pianist and conductor who has used music to build bridges between conflicting cultural groups.
In 2001 Barenboim broke a long-running taboo by conducting a piece by Wagner in Israel. He also assembled an orchestra consisting of young Arabs and Israelis. Recently, Barenboim was awarded honorary Palestinian citizenship after holding a concert in Ramallah.
Desmond Tutu is a well-known South African activist, whose efforts to solve the issue of apartheid, during 1980s, fetched him worldwide fame. Born in 1931, in Klerksdorp, Tutu chose teaching as his profession. After serving as a lecturer for few years, he pursued Theology. He was the first black person to become the Archbishop of Cape Town. He also became the first black Bishop of Johannesburg. Tutu is the second South African to receive Noble Peace Prize.
Capra's books have gained popularity on the implications of science, notably The Tao of Physics, subtitled An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism. The Tao of Physics makes an assertion that physics and metaphysics are both inexorably leading to the same knowledge.
Soros is ranked 29th in Forbes’ World’s Billionaires, mainly because of the Soros Fund Management. His vast fortune is duly matched by his generosity. From 2007-2008 alone, he contributed $474.6 million to non-profit organizations, and gave over $106,000 in political contributions. George Soros also created the Soros Humanitarian Foundation to which he gave $230 million.
James Lovelock is an independent scientist and futurologist. He is best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, which puts the biosphere as a self-regulating entity with the capacity to keep our planet healthy by controlling the chemical and physical environment. A lifelong inventor, Lovelock has created and developed many scientific instruments, some of which were designed for NASA in its program of planetary exploration. It was while working as a consultant for NASA that he developed the Gaia Hypothesis, for which he is most widely known. He also invented the microwave oven.
Jane Goodall hasn't exactly found the missing link, but she's come closer than just about anyone else on Earth. Her extensive research into the behavior of chimpanzees, which started in Africa in the 1960s and continues today, fundamentally altered scientific thinking about the relationship between humans and other mammals.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is the Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is also Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. From 2002 to 2006, he was Director of the UN Millennium Project and Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals, the internationally agreed goals to reduce extreme poverty, disease, and hunger by the year 2015. Sachs is also President and Co-Founder of Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization aimed at ending extreme global poverty.
Joseph Eugene Stiglitz is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979). He is also the former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. He is known for his critical view of the management of globalization, free-market economists (whom he calls "free market fundamentalists") and some international institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
In 2000, Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD), a think tank on international development based at Columbia University. Since 2001, he has been a member of the Columbia faculty, and has been a University Professor since 2003.
Princess Katherine has a strong humanitarian drive. She has high expectations and a profound belief that mankind's problems can be solved through the use of man's creative intelligence and inventive mind.
Kumi Naidoo is a South African campaigner. He is a GCAP (Global Call to Action Against Poverty) and Secretary General and CEO of CIVICUS: world alliance for citizen participation since 1998. He was appointed by the UN, Secretary General to the Eminent Persons Group on United Nations Civil Society Relations. He became the Executive Director of Greenpeace International in November 2009, Kumi Naidoo is recognized internationally as a forceful advocate for gender equity and against gender violence.
As a research project at Stanford University, Page and Brin created a search engine that listed results according to the popularity of the pages, after concluding that the most popular result would often be the most useful.
They called the search engine Google after the mathematical term "Googol," which is a 1 followed by 100 zeros, to reflect their mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the Web.
Noam Chomsky is a singular figure on the American political scene. Love him or hate him, he has successfully stuck around for half a century as one of American society’s most vocal, serious, and controversial political thinkers. He has steadily produced thorough critiques of American society and political policy for decades, and he is considered to be a major 20th century political writer and philosopher.
Since receiving her Oscar nomination for her debut film performance in “The Color Purple,” actress, television host and producer Winfrey went on to establish herself as one of the most influential figures in entertainment and philanthropy. She has been especially dedicated to supporting educational initiatives and raising awareness of issues that affect women and children, both in the United States and around the globe. Her philanthropic efforts have included Oprah's Angel Network, the Oprah Winfrey Foundation, and the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa, which opened in 2007.
Coelho is an outspoken activist for peace and social justice, and also supports the free distribution of his work. He and his wife Christina split their time between his home city, Rio de Janeiro, and France.
Peter Blom has been CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board of Triodos Bank since 1997. He is member of The Club of Rome, Chair of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values, Member of the Board of The Dutch Banking Association, member of the Sustainable Food and Agricultural Council of the Netherlands and Deputy Chairman of the Multifunctional Agriculture Taskforce.
Peter Blom was awarded the Dutch Royal distinction of Knight of Oranje Nassau in 2008 for his contribution to social banking and sustainability.
David Attenborough is one of the most widely respected TV broadcasters and has become known as the face and voice of natural history documentaries. His career in broadcasting has stretched over more than a half a century since 1952.
He is best known for writing and presenting the nine Life series, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, which collectively form a comprehensive survey of all life on the planet. He is also a former senior manager at the BBC, having served as controller of BBC Two and director of programming for BBC Television in the 1960s and 1970s.
Attenborough is a younger brother of director, producer and actor Richard Attenborough.
From an early age, Stephen Hawking showed a passion for science and the sky. Aged 21, while studying cosmology at Cambridge, Hawking was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Despite his debilitating illness, he has done ground-breaking work in physics and cosmology and his several books strive to make science accessible to everyone.
Stevie Wonder, born Steveland Morris, was made blind as the result of a hospital error soon after his birth. He began playing the harmonica at five, started piano lessons at six and then took up the drums at eight. In addition to being an award winning musical innovator, Stevie Wonder is a humanitarian who has used his music to support a number of social causes. In support of making Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday a national holiday, Wonder released "Happy Birthday" (1980), a song celebrating Dr. King. The song became a hit and a rallying cry for the King Holiday.
A graduate of Oxford University, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, an internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing while at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, in 1989. He wrote the first web client and server in 1990. His specifications of URIs, HTTP and HTML were refined as Web technology spread.
He is the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a Web standards organization founded in 1994 which develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential. He was a Director of the Web Science Trust (WST) launched in 2009 to promote research and education in Web Science, the multidisciplinary study of humanity connected by technology.
Tim is a Director of the World Wide Web Foundation, launched in 2009 to coordinate efforts to further the potential of the Web to benefit humanity.
He has promoted open government data globally and is a member of the UK's Transparency Board.
Trinh Xuan Thuan is a famous Vietnamese/American Astro-Physician at the crossroad between scientific and spiritual research.
Vandana Shiva, a world-renowned environmental thinker, activist, physicist, feminist, philosopher of science, writer and science policy advocate, is the Director of The Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy. She serves as an ecology advisor to several organizations including the Third World Network and the Asia Pacific People's Environment Network. In 1993 she was the recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, commonly known as the "Alternative Nobel Prize". A contributing editor to People-Centered Development Forum, she has also written several works include, "Staying Alive," "The Violence of the Green Revolution," "Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge," "Monoculutures of the Mind" and "Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit," as well as over 300 papers in leading scientific and technical journals.
The photographs of Yann Arthus-Bertrand are among the most famous in the world — as a naturalist photographer, he produces sensitive surveys of the world and those who live in it. He is a leading environmental activist who has convinced millions with his photos and films that it is time to act now!
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