Since 1000 A.D., around 30 billion people have been brn on our planet. The vast majority have come and gone unknown to all but their friends and family. A few have left some trace on history: a discovery made, perhaps, or a record broken. Of those, fewer still are remembered long after their death. Yet of ali the people who have lived their lives during the last 1,000 years, just 38 have achieved the status of 'Millennial Minds' - thats barely one in a billion. Those whose lives Focus has chronicled have thus become members of possibly the most exclusive list of all time. And choosing who should be included was not easy. From the beginning, the single most important criterion was that the 'Millennial Minds' are those who did more than merely achieve greatness in their own time, or in one field. Thus mere winners of Nobel Prizes had no automatic right to inclusion, nor artists who gained fame in their own era, but whose reputation has faded with changing fashion. The achievements of the genuine 'Millennial Mind' affect our lives even now, often in ways so fundamental that it is hard to imagine what the world was like before. Not even transcendent genius was enough to guarantee a place in the Focus list. To rate as a 'Millennial Mind', the life and achievements also had to cast light on the complex nature of creativity: its origins, nature, and its personal cost. The first paragraph tells us that____.