How did we decide who should be on this list? The criteria are relatively simple. Candidates have to be living, and still active in public life. They have to have shown distinction in their particular field as well as an ability to influence debate across borders.
We want you to vote for your top five thinkers from the longlist of 100. You also have a bonus vote for one public intellectual you think has been unjustly excluded. Simply click here to see the full list and to register your vote; results will be announced in the July issue of Prospect. Our choices are not "objective" and reveal the combined biases of the two magazines. You can challenge our selection on our blog, First Drafts—and we will print a selection of the best responses.
Christopher Hitchens, the world's fifth top public intellectual in 2005, has also written a piece for us on the uses and abuses of the term; you can read this here.
