Audio By Vocalize A cross-disciplinary indexing body has named 38 people the “Merit Sovereigns of the 21st Century,” in a ranking spanning humanitarian workers, scientists, athletes, monarchs and child activists, scored against a 1,000-point framework its authors say rewards documented achievement over public visibility. Impact Hallmarks (IH©) unveiled the list in its Quarticentennial Merited Impacts Gazette, covering 2000 to 2025, the first merit-based retrospective of the century’s opening quarter. An initial pool of 1.9 million notables across 195 countries was narrowed to 187 individuals by 150 independent assessors, using a scoring system called the Merited Impact Value (MIV) framework,…