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Three ancient Greeks among the most influential personalities
An analysis of links within Wikipedia articles by Young-Ho Eom of the University of Toulouse, France, and colleagues gave Linnaeus the title after they used the Google PageRank algorithm to come up with their list.
Google uses this algorithm to count the number of incoming links to a webpage, because pages that are linked to by a lot of other sites are likely to be important. Eom applied the algorithm to 24 separate language editions of Wikipedia to see if different cultures rated different historical figures as the most important.
Linnaeus topped the chart across all languages because there are so many Wikipedia pages with scientific names in every edition, and they all eventually lead back to him.
The team also looked at how the number of important people is spaced throughout history. Most people in their lists were born after the 17th century, in line with the general rise of global population, but there are spikes in the 5th and 1st century BC thanks to ancient Greek scholars, Roman leaders and Christian figures.
Thus, the first top ten (based algorithm PageRank) is composed by:
- Linnaeus
- Jesus Christ
- Aristotle
- Napoleon
- Hitler
- Caesar
- Plato
- Shakespeare
- Einstein
- Queen Elizabeth II
Noteworthy is the global reach of both Aristotle and Plato, as included in the top hundred (Top 100) versions of Wikipedia and 24 major languages of the world. In the English-language Wikipedia Aristotle holds the 7th position of influence, so the appeal is even greater in non-English speaking countries.
The second top ten (based algorithm 2DRank) series includes:
- Hitler
- Michael Jackson
- Madonna
- Jesus Christ
- Beethoven
- Mozart
- Pope Benedict
- Alexander the Great
- Darwin
- Barack Obama
See more: ArXiv
