Who's the greatest?

And in the coming weeks we are being asked to decide the greatest of them all in an enterprising challenge, that will hopefully tax all our readers.

Inspired by BBC's television series which invited viewers to choose between the likes of Nelson, Shakespeare, Churchill and Princess Diana on who was the greatest Briton of all time, the Oxford Trust today launches its own search to find who local people think is the greatest Oxfordshire entrepreneur in history.

And as with the television series we are being presented with a shortlist of six to choose from.

After trawling through a thousand years of history, a panel has come up with a pretty impressive line up by any standards. Not even the multi-millionaire Virgin boss Richard Branson, who lives in Kidlington, has made the cut.

As for Robert Maxwell, the creator of Pergamon Press, he makes it to a special supplementary list called Saints and Sinners, where he finds himself in the company of Sister Frances Dominica, the founder of the world's first children's hospice in East Oxford - "an entrepreneur" somewhat at the other end of the business spectrum.

The big six that we are being invited to choose from are:

• Sir Basil Blackwell (1889-1984), of the famous Oxford bookselling and publishing family, who greatly expanded the Blackwell's business.

• Charles Early (1824-1912), the Victorian who transformed Early's blanket making business in Witney.

• Martha Lane Fox (1973-present), the co-founder of lastminute.com, which became the icon of the Internet boom.

• Thomas Knowles (1841-1892), who restored the fortunes of the famous Oxford building company Knowles and Son, by winning contracts with university colleges.

• Lord Nuffield (1877-1963), who made Cowley a major car manufacturing centre and was to become the world's second largest car maker after Henry Ford.

• Sir Martin and Lady Audrey Wood, founders of Oxford Instruments, the company which grew into a world leader in making superconducting magnets.

Posters urging people to vote will soon be appearing on buses, in libraries and schools, while a special exhibition opened on Tuesday at Science Oxford in St Clement's, which will run until June 22.

The Great Entrepreneurs vote will be officially launched today, when well-known local figures will each champion one of the six on the shortlist, again following the lead of the Great Briton series, which saw an impressive Jeremy Clarkson performance almost winning it for Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Hugo Brunner, the Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, will be putting the case for Lord Nuffield, while Felicity Lusk, the headteacher of Oxford High School, will be fighting for Martha Lane Fox, who went to the school in North Oxford.

Geography professor Andrew Goudie, the master of St Cross College, Oxford, whose text books are published by Blackwell's, will champion Sir Basil Blackwell, and the Oxford architect Alan Berman will speak up for Thomas Knowles.

Amusingly, Sir Martin Wood will be urging people to vote for Charles Early as the greatest entrepreneur, while the case for Sir Martin and Lady Wood will be put by Tim Cook, the ex-managing director of Isis Innovation.

A whole series of events will follow every Tuesday evening at Science Oxford, based around each of the six shortlisters. They will begin on May 15 with a tribute to Charles Early and the industrial revolution in Oxfordshire.

Gillian Pearson, chief executive of the Oxford Trust, said the idea had grown out of one of the major strands of Oxfordshire's millennium celebrations, called the Faces of Oxfordshire. This project involves a series of events in galleries, theatres and museums to uncover both famous and unfamiliar faces in Oxfordshire over the last 1,000 years.

Ms Pearson said: "We felt it was really important to feature great entrepreneurs of Oxfordshire, recognising the way they have shaped the county, added to its dynamic and diverse culture and made a huge contribution to its economic prosperity.

"We arrived at the shortlist of six after much heated discussion. We have deliberately chosen a range of individuals from different centuries and from different industries. It will be fascinating to see who the public vote for.

"But I'm looking forward even more to the debate that I hope we will create about which other Oxfordshire entrepreneurs people think we should have included and why."

It seems support for Richard Branson drained away on the basis that, while he lives in the county, his business empire developed elsewhere and did not create jobs locally.

The same could not be said of Sir Frank Williams, the founder and boss of the Williams Formula One team. Sir Frank famously started his business in a phone box, creating jobs first in Didcot, then in Grove, helping establish the county's reputation as the world centre of motor racing. But on his occasion he has not even made it to the starting line.

Others who just failed to make the shortlist included Mark and James Morrell, who created Morrell's brewery in Oxford and owned many pubs in the city; Frank Cooper, who began by selling marmalade made by his wife and built the Jam Factory on Park End street; and Jeremy Mogford, owner of The Old Bank Hotel, Gee's, The Old Parsonage Hotel and the Quod chain of restaurants.

Martha Lane Fox is one of two woman on the shortlist and certainly the most modern of the six.

Her online travel and gift business, lastminute.com, led the Internet boom, with its share price reaching £5. It was to drop to 20p when the dotcom bubble burst, but lastminute.com was one of the survivors.

Martha, whose father Robin teaches at New College, stepped down as managing director three years ago and remains a non-executive director of the company. After making a recovery from a serious car accident in 2004, she is certainly the only one of the six to have invested in a karaoke bar in London's Soho.

The other woman - Lady Audrey Wood - has been jointly nominated with her husband Sir Martin. Sir Martin had worked in Oxford University's physics department, specialising in low-temperature physics and magnetic fields, his role being to design equipment for research scientists. When in 1959 he founded Oxford Instruments, as one of the first university spin-off companies, it was famously based in his back garden. While Audrey was the ideas man, she looked after the finance and administrative side.

Together in 1961, they began making superconducting magnets, a technology in which OI is still a world leader. The couple continue to sit on boards of numerous small high-tech companies and have helped generations of academic entrepreneurs.

Sir Basil Blackwell proved to be more of a controversial choice.

There was no doubt that a Blackwell should be there, the problem was which one.

Claire Dimond, who is organising the Great Entrepreneur exhibition, said there was strong support even within Blackwell's for Sir Basil's father, that Benjamin, who started the company in 1879, should be honoured.

But supporters of Sir Basil could point to the fact that he founded Blackwell Scientific Publications, set up a separate publishing company and published books by the likes of Graham Greene, J.R.R Tolkien and W.H. Auden.

Nor was the the choice of who should represent the famous Oxford building family Knowles and Son a cut-and-dried one. But Thomas Knowles, from Victorian times, was viewed as the man who really laid the foundations of the company's success, securing sales of £9,480 in 1885.

Knowles in narrowly pipped as the 'oldest' entrepreneur to make the shortlist. That honour goes to Charles Early, who at 15 was apprenticed to his father to learn blanket weaving. He joined the family firm in the 1840s and was very soon controlling it, as he was to do for the next 60 years.

Lord Nuffield, who started life as William Morris, is one of the few who could rival that kind of longevity. He can surely claim to have left more of a mark on Oxford than any other person this century, effectively turning it from a quiet academic haven into an industrial centre. The boy who left school at 14 to repair racing cycles, was to end up giving away an estimated £30m to charities and institutions in his lifetime.

Whether that should make him the greatest Oxfordshire entrepreneur of all time is up to you.

• To vote, go to oxtrust.org.uk. The exhibition at Science Oxford, 1-5 London Place, Oxford, runs until June 22. It is open from 10am to 4pm weekdays.