The Minister of Finances Yanis Varoufakis reported that he was “humbled” to be included in the list of top 10 World Thinkers for 2015 by British magazine Prospect.

About 3,000 readers of the British magazine, which mainly focuses on politics and finances, voted on the top thinkers for 2015, which also included economists Thomas Piketty and Paul Krugman, activist and author Naomi Klein and comedian Russell Brand.

The magazine says of Varoufakis: “Syriza’s victory in January’s Greek general election was in no small part due to the efforts of Yanis Varoufakis, now installed as Finance Minister. Varoufakis, who holds a PhD in game theory from the University of Essex, and calls himself an “accidental economist,” first set out an alterntive to German-imposed austerity in 2010. The restructuring of Greece’s debt that Varoufakis has been trying to sell to other eurozone leaders has its origins in those proposals. Whether Varoufakis succeeds in persuading Angela Merkel of its merits remains to be seen. The portents, however, are not auspicious—some European leaders are said to be tiring of Varoufakis’s habit of saying one thing in negotiations in Brussels and another to audiences at home“.

The full list is as follows:

  1. Thomas Piketty – economist
  2. Yanis Varoufakis – Greek Minister of Finances
  3. Naomi Klein – activist and author
  4. Russell Brand – comedian and activist
  5. Paul Krugman – economist
  6. Arundhati Roy – activist and authro
  7. Jürgen Habermas – philosopher and socialogist
  8. Daniel Kahneman – Psychologist
  9. John Gray – political analyst and philosopher
  10. Atul Gawande – surgeon and author