I can't call them hero's but definitely a couple of the people I admire engineering wise are Bjarne Stroustrup and Martin Fowler. Mainly because both of them take a very pragmatic approach to things and I've never gotten the sense that they feel they have all the answers or stopped learning. Both from my very limited interactions with them and from reading their work and interviews appear to be humble and value intelligence and the principle of question everything.
There are others, such as Pat Helland, again, I wouldn't call him a hero, but he definitely influenced a lot of my thinking. Mainly because he asked hard questions that makes you have to defend your position from a place of intellectual strength, logic and reason. I've kinda lost track of him in the last number of years.
One more modern engineer I can say I think is pretty damn awesome is TJ Holowaychuk. I do not know him, never interacted with him (that I know of), but his work is pretty awesome and his depth of digging in is just insane.
BTW I don't consider just because someone influenced me or that I respect them that I agree with all their opinions/ideas, sometimes their opinion/stance/idea was the catalyst that made me defend my position to know I was right (or at least that I felt right).
