A gathering of some of Boston's--and Harvard's--most important people wrestled last night with a question that perplexed them all: Who is the most important person of the century or the millennium?

Harvard faculty comprised four of the five panelists who debated the issue in a Boston Public Library fundraiser at the posh Bostonian Hotel last night.

About 75 people paid $135 each to hear the thoughts of Warburg Professor of Economics emeritus John Kenneth Galbraith, Professor of Geology Stephen J. Gould, Radcliffe Public Policy Fellow Wendy Kaminer, Cowles Professor of Sociology Orlando Patterson and Esquire columnist Mark Leyner as they discussed their picks in the hotel's Seasons restaurant.

Renowned journalist Bill Kovach, curator of the Nieman Foundation, moderated the forum after scheduled moderator Marvin Kalb, who heads the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy, took ill in Washington.

Leyner, whom the program termed the night's "Comic Relief," noted at one point that he--not entirely intentionally--misunderstood the invitation he received to be a panelist at the event.

"When I got this and I saw, 'Who is the Person of the Millennium/Century,' I thought we had been nominated," Leyner said, prompting audience guffaws.

On a more serious note, Gould began the dialogue by citing what was, for him, an "obvious" choice.

"From a purely parochial view as an evolutionary biologist, I have to come down with the...utterly unsurprisingly choice--Charles Darwin," Gould said.

Kovach observed, however, that "millennial terms are too short for [Gould's] thought process," and Gould bore that out in his opening remarks.

"If you granted me all of human history, there's no question [that my choice would be] mitochondrial Eve and y-chromosome Adam, through which all of our chromosomes passed," Gould said.

"And if you use my grandmother's criterion, it's simple--was it good for the Jews?" he joked, saying that the philosopher Maimonides would have topped her list.

Galbraith confined himself to this century.

"Obviously, I do not want to be involved with Shakespeare, Elizabeth, Napoleon or, for that matter, Darwin," the economist said. "The range is just too broad."

Galbraith said he chose Franklin D. Roosevelt '04 because he helped foster a compassionate mood among the American public during the era of the Great Depression and the two World Wars, what Galbraith considers the defining events of our century.

The 87-year-old Galbraith also jovially reminded the panelists that he himself has "covered most of this century" and spoke "with an authority that no one else [on the panel] really has."