Who are the heroes of our time? Who is driving us to a better future? And who is inspiring and guiding us?
Anything goes: famous people, people in your own life, fictional people who represent something to your culture, groups of people working behind the scenes etc.
The only rule is they must be current.
Stephen Hawking.
He has influenced how physicists look at the world, and they in turn have taught us how to see the world, and nearly everybody believes what he has told (even though some of the topics do not fit with newer observations anymore, but still nobody has come up with really better explanations).