Musk’s latest dream is the Hyperloop, a giant pneumatic tube that would transport passengers from L.A. to San Francisco in 35 minutes. It sounds crazy, but as Wojcicki points out, “Elon Musk is one of the few people who can propose the Hyperloop and be taken seriously.”

Janette Sadik-Khan

Commissioner, New York City Department of Transportation

NOMINATED BY: Allison Arieff, design writer

In her six years running New York City’s streets, the legendarily data-driven Sadik-Khan has tangibly changed the city’s landscape. Thanks to new open spaces (including a plaza in the middle of Times Square), hundreds of miles of bike lanes, and the nation’s largest bike-share system, New York is now a friendly, pleasant place to navigate on foot or by bicycle—at least, more so than it used to be. Sadik-Khan has also pushed other cities to use transportation infrastructure as a catalyst for economic development.

Markus Persson

Creator, Minecraft

NOMINATED BY: Paola Antonelli, senior curator for architecture and design, Museum of Modern Art

In a world of lushly designed video games, Markus Persson’s Minecraft feels almost old-school. Its characters and settings are constructed from Lego-like blocks that players use to build whatever they like. For Antonelli, who acquired the game this summer for MoMA’s budding video-game collection, this accessibility is revolutionary. “For the first time, people can make things in the digital world without knowing how to program,” she says. “The educational potential is huge.”

Vint Cerf

"Father of the Internet"

NOMINATED BY: Mariette DiChristina, editor in chief, Scientific American

While at the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency in the 1970s, Cerf and his fellow computer scientist Bob Kahn created the TCP/IP technology that enabled the World Wide Web—“setting the stage,” according to DiChristina, “for today’s instant communication and collaboration.”

Ronald W. Davis

Biochemist and geneticist, Stanford

NOMINATED BY: George Church, professor of genetics, Harvard Medical School

A substantial number of the major genetic advances of the past 20 years can be traced back to Davis in some way. He was one of the first scientists to begin mapping and cloning DNA, in the 1960s, and his biotech methods have proved pivotal to the Human Genome Project and the ongoing pursuit of genetically targeted medical treatments. “He’s not just a one-hit wonder,” says Church. “He’s a frequent provider of disruptive core technologies.”

Jeff Bezos

Founder and CEO, Amazon

NOMINATED BY: Kara Swisher, co–executive editor, AllThingsD.com

The story of how Bezos went from selling books out of his Seattle garage to running the world’s biggest online retailer (see “The Amazon Mystery” in this issue) is much mythologized. He “has changed the way retail is done on a scale that no other entrepreneur, save Steve Jobs in mobile, has done for a single industry,” says Swisher. Now that Bezos is turning more attention to his side projects—specifically, a promised reinvention of The Washington Post, which he purchased this summer—his legacy may encompass much more than retail.