Although it will do them no good, many people want to be remembered long after they are dead; they want, it seems, to leave some sort of legacy. For some, nothing short of a monument will do. However, monuments collapse and memories fade and even if one's name is not forgotten, what is remembered is not the person that once bore that name but merely some distant impression of who they might have been.
Better, perhaps, is to have had a good idea and leave that as one's legacy. Leave that in the minds of one's fellow human beings so that it might enrich their lives for generations to come. Better that than try to make the future look back at some character from the past; a character that they will never really know for sure.
