Who would you resurrect, and why?

Of all the people from history, musicians, actors, scientists, writers…whatever, someone of note who died before his or her time, and you somehow were given the power to magically bring one back, who would it be. Here’s how it would work.

Basically whomever you picked has to be someone who died too young for whatever reason, someone who you believe had something left to offer the world. And your choice would result in that person never having died when they did. Basically whatever event brought on that person’s death never would have happened, and that person would be allowed to live the rest of his or her natural life (even if by now that person would be dead anyway).

To give you an example of what I’m thinking, I’d probably resurrect Kurt Cobain. The reason is that even though I think the Beatles were the best band ever, they had been broken up for 10 years when John Lennon died and as much as I like his solo work, it didn’t stack up to the Beatles, and I don’t think even if they’d gotten back together at some point between 1980 and when George died, I doubt they would have been able to come up with anything as glorious as they made in the 60s.

But Nirvana was still actively working together at the time of Cobain’s death, and I believe that each Nirvana album was a quantum leap beyond their previous effort. I feel like with every album they released, it advanced music by a couple of decades. And I believe that if they had been allowed to continue and make albums as long as the Beatles did, their overall influence on future music could have even given the Beatles a run for their money. I can only imagine not only the great additional Nirvana music we’d have today, but all the great music that would have been inspired by what they never got a chance to do.

That’s my opinion…what’s yours? Who would you bring back, and why?