It would be too easy to rank the world's richest people today. You could simply take the founders of some of the top firms in the world, sort them by the value of holdings in their company and voila! At AskMen, we have consulted with economists, financiers and historians to rank some of the most influential men in the history of humanity, as ranked by wealth in 2001 US Dollars (some figures are approximate as they take into consideration inflation, GDP growth, currency exchange rates, and fluctuations in share prices).