Cambridge University Press

Cambridge University Press

978-1-107-04137-0 - Who's Bigger?: Where Historical Figures Really Rank

Steven Skiena and Charles B. Ward
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part 1
Quantitative History
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Historys Most Significant People
People love lists: the Ten Commandments, the Seven Deadly Sins, and
the Four Beatles. But they are fascinated by rankings, which are lists
organized according to some measure of value or merit. Who were the
most important women in history? The best writers or most influential
artists? Our least illustrious presidents? Whos bigger: John, Paul, George, or
Ringo?
This is a book about measuring the significance of historical figures.
We do not answer these questions as historians might, through a principled assessment of their individual achievements. Instead, we evaluate each
person by aggregating the traces of millions of opinions in a rigorous and
principled manner. We rank historical figures just as Google ranks web
pages, by integrating a diverse set of measurements about their reputation
into a single consensus value.
Significance is related to fame but measures something different. Forgotten U.S. president Chester A. Arthur (18291886) [499] is more historically
significant than young pop singer Justin Bieber (1994) [8633], even
though he may have a less devoted following and lower contemporary name
recognition. Significance is the result of social and cultural forces acting on
the mass of an individuals achievement. We think you will be impressed by
the extent to which our results capture what you think of as historical significance. And our computational, data-centric analysis provides new ways
to understand and interpret the past.
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q u a n t i t a t i v e h i s t o ry
1.1 People as Memes

We will be interested in the concept of people as memes, simple ideas that
reproduce when spread from mind to mind. Memes were introduced by
Richard Dawkins (1941) [1630] in his book The Selfish Gene [Dawkins,
1990]. He observed that ideas undergo the same processes of natural selection and modification as that of biological species, and hence can be studied
using the same tools of evolutionary theory.
For example, the teenaged pop star meme that is Justin Bieber (1994)
[8633] reproduces every time someone reads his Wikipedia page, or he
makes news for some performance or gossip-worthy transgression. It weakens whenever a newly grown-up fan removes his poster from the bedroom
wall. The Bieber meme will continue to thrive until some future star comes
to occupy his particular environmental niche.
Many historical figures reduce to small stories of who they are and
why they are known. The meme of Betsy Ross (17521836) [2430] as the
woman who first sewed the American flag is an excellent example. It does
not really matter whether she actually did sew the first flag (the evidence isnt
very strong here) but catching this meme is valuable as a cultural reference
in American colonial history and the evolution of gender roles.
Thinking about historical figures as memes turns the processes of fame
into a legitimate area of study. We can think of people as occupying
niches in history, analogous to how species thrive in particular ecological systems. Sometimes cultural niches disappear, along with memories of
all those who occupied them. Historical figures are always in danger of
being displaced, whenever stronger but analogous memes rise up to replace
them.
Our historical significance measures can be thought of as a quantitative
tool to measure the strength of historical memes. We will use this tool to
highlight the forces at work in building popular history.
1.2 Our 100

So we have a ranking for you. Figures 1.1 and 1.2 present our ranking of
the 100 most significant historical figures according to our computational
methods.
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h i s t o r y< s m o s t s i g n i f i c a nt people
Rank
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
Name
Dates
Description
Jesus
Napoleon
Muhammad
William Shakespeare
Abraham Lincoln
George Washington
Adolf Hitler
Aristotle
Alexander the Great
Thomas Jefferson
Henry VIII
Charles Darwin
Elizabeth I
Karl Marx
Julius Caesar
Queen Victoria
Martin Luther
Joseph Stalin
Albert Einstein
Christopher Columbus
Isaac Newton
Charlemagne
Theodore Roosevelt
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Plato
Louis XIV
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ulysses S. Grant
Leonardo da Vinci
Augustus
Carl Linnaeus
Ronald Reagan
Charles Dickens
Paul the Apostle
Benjamin Franklin
George W. Bush
Winston Churchill
Genghis Khan
Charles I
Thomas Edison
James I
Friedrich Nietzsche
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Sigmund Freud
Alexander Hamilton
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Woodrow Wilson
Johann Sebastian Bach
Galileo Galilei
Oliver Cromwell
(7 B.C.A.D. 30)
(17691821)
(570632)
(15641616)
(18091865)
(17321799)
(18891945)
(384322 B.C.)
(356323 B.C.)
(17431826)
(14911547)
(18091882)
(15331603)
(18181883)
(10044 B.C.)
(18191901)
(14831546)
(18781953)
(18791955)
(14511506)
(16431727)
(742814)
(18581919)
(17561791)
(427347 B.C.)
(16381715)
(17701827)
(18221885)
(14521519)
(63 B.C.A.D. 14)
(17071778)
(19112004)
(18121870)
(A.D. 5A.D. 67)
(17061790)
(1946)
(18741965)
(11621227)
(16001649)
(18471931)
(15661625)
(18441900)
(18821945)
(18561939)
(17551804)
(18691948)
(18561924)
(16851750)
(15641642)
(15991658)
Central figure of Christianity

Emperor of France (Battle of Waterloo)
Prophet and founder of Islam
English playwright (Hamlet)
16th U.S. president (U.S. Civil War)
1st U.S. president (American Revolution)
Fuehrer of Nazi Germany (World War II)
Greek philosopher and polymath
Greek king and conqueror of the known world
3rd U.S. president (Decl. of Independence)
King of England (six wives)
Scientist (Theory of Evolution)
Queen of England (The Virgin Queen)
Philosopher ("Communist Manifesto")
Roman general and statesman ("Et tu, Brute?")
Queen of Britain (Victorian Era)
Protestant Reformation (95 Theses)
Premier of USSR (World War II)
Theoretical physicist (Relativity)
Explorer, discoverer of the New World
Scientist (Theory of Gravity)
First Holy Roman Emperor ("Father of Europe")
26th U.S. President (Progressive Movement)
Austrian composer (Don Giovanni)
Greek philosopher (Republic)
King of France ("The Sun King")
German composer ("Ode to Joy")
18th U.S. president and Civil War general
Italian artist and polymath ("Mona Lisa")
First Emperor of Rome (Pax Romana)
Swedish biologist (Father of Taxonomy)
40th U.S. president (Conservative Revolution)
English novelist (David Copperfield)
Christian apostle and missionary
Founding father/scientist (captured lightning)
43rd U.S. president (Iraq War)
Prime minister of Britain (World War II)
Founder of the Mongol Empire
King of England (English Civil War)
Inventor (light bulb, phonograph)
King of England (King James Bible)
German philosopher ("God is dead")
32nd U.S. President (New Deal, World War II)
Neurologist and creator of psychoanalysis
U.S. Founding Father (National Bank)
Indian nationalist leader (Nonviolence)
28th U.S. president (World War I)
Classical composer (Well-Tempered Clavier)
Italian physicist and astronomer
Lord Protector of England (English Civil War)
F I G U R E 1.1.
The 100 Most Historically Significant Figures (150).
www.cambridge.org

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Rank
Name
Dates
Description
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
James Madison
Gautama Buddha
Mark Twain
Edgar Allan Poe
Joseph Smith
Adam Smith
David
George III
Immanuel Kant
James Cook
John Adams
Richard Wagner
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Voltaire
Saint Peter
Andrew Jackson
Constantine the Great
Socrates
Elvis Presley
William the Conqueror
John F. Kennedy
Augustine of Hippo
Vincent van Gogh
Nicolaus Copernicus
Vladimir Lenin
Robert E. Lee
Oscar Wilde
Charles II
Cicero
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Francis Bacon
Richard Nixon
Louis XVI
Charles V
King Arthur
Michelangelo
Philip II
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Ali
Thomas Aquinas
Pope John Paul II
Ren Descartes
Nikola Tesla
Harry S. Truman
Joan of Arc
Dante Alighieri
Otto von Bismarck
Grover Cleveland
John Calvin
John Locke
(17511836)
(563483 B.C.)
(18351910)
(18091849)
(18051844)
(17231790)
(1040970 B.C.)
(17381820)
(17241804)
(17281779)
(17351826)
(18131883)
(18401893)
(16941778)
(??)
(17671845)
(272337)
(469399 B.C.)
(19351977)
(10271087)
(19171963)
(354430)
(18531890)
(14731543)
(18701924)
(18071870)
(18541900)
(16301685)
(10643 B.C.)
(17121778)
(15611626)
(19131994)
(17541793)
(15001558)
(??)
(14751564)
(15271598)
(17491832)
(598661)
(12251274)
(19202005)
(15961650)
(18561943)
(18841972)
(14121431)
(12651321)
(18151898)
(18371908)
(15091564)
(16321704)
4th U.S. president (War of 1812)

Central figure of Buddhism
American author (Huckleberry Finn)
American author ("The Raven")
American religious leader (Mormonism)
Economist (The Wealth of Nations)
Biblical King of Israel (Jerusalem)
King of England (American Revolution)
German philosopher (Critique of Pure Reason)
Explorer and discoverer of Hawaii, Australia
Founding Father and 2nd U.S. President
German composer (Der Ring des Nibelungen)
Russian composer (1812 Overture)
French Enlightenment philosopher (Candide)
Early Christian leader
7th U.S. president ("Old Hickory")
Emperor of Rome (First Christian emperor)
Greek philosopher and teacher (Hemlock)
The "king of rock and roll"
King of England (Norman Conquest)
35th U.S. president (Cuban Missile Crisis)
Early Christian theologian ("The City of God")
Post-impressionist painter ("Starry Night")
Astronomer (Heliocentric cosmology)
Soviet revolutionary and Premier of USSR
Confederate General (U.S. Civil War)
Irish author and poet (Dorian Gray)
King of England (Post-Cromwell)
Roman statesman and orator (On the Republic)
Philosopher (On the Social Contract)
English scientist (Scientific method)
37th U.S. president (Watergate)
King of France (executed in French Revolution)
Holy Roman Emperor (Counter-Reformation)
Mythical 6th-century King of Britain
Italian sculptor and Renaissance man (David)
King of Spain (Spanish Armada)
German writer and polymath (Faust)
Early Caliph and a central figure of Sufism
Italian theologian ("Summa theologiae")
20th-century Polish Pope (Solidarity)
French philosopher ("I think, therefore I am")
Inventor (alternating current)
33rd U.S. president (Korean War)
French military leader and saint
Italian poet (Divine Comedy)
1st chancellor and unifier of modern Germany
22nd and 24th U.S. president
French Protestant theologian (Calvinism)
English Enlightenment philosopher (Tabula rasa)
F I G U R E 1.2.
The 100 Most Historically Significant Figures (51100).
Please study our rankings for a while. We are confident that you will
have at least a nodding familiarity with most of these people. Grade yourself
on how many of our choices you have heard of: knowing 70 is a C, 80 earns
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a B, and 90 will get you on an A. We are pretty sure we have a lot of A

students/readers out there, but if youre not yet one of them, consider this
book your opportunity to meet some new people.1
We dont expect you will agree with everyone chosen for the top 100, or
exactly where they are placed. But we trust you will agree that most selections are reasonable: a mix of famous people including the major pillars
of Western civilization. A quarter of them are philosophers or major religious figures, plus eight scientists/inventors, thirteen giants in literature and
music, and three of the greatest artists of all time.
The success of our ranking methods is best established by the banality
of our results. You should be reassured by your familiarity with our top
100, instead of being startled by our claims: say, if we promoted Francis
Scott Key (17771843) [1050] as a critical historical figure. Our methods
summarize the knowledge of all the authors and readers of the Englishlanguage Wikipedia, to order historical figures consistent with the general
views of this community. By definition, you should see the names here that
you expect to see.
1.3 Other Peoples Rankings

Historical judgment is subjective. Scholars continue to argue about the
causes of wars and other great events. Political and cultural biases come
into play, and the past is always being reinterpreted. There is no replacement for the critical process of highly trained scholars to the workings of
the humanities and social sciences. And yet, we can learn important things
about the past by studying its traces using computational methods.
We are by no means the first people to publish rankings of the most
significant people in history. Over the course of this project, we have uncovered more than three dozen published rankings of the (typically) top 100
people in one historical domain or another. But we believe that we are
the first to do so using a rigorous statistical methodology, which avoids
some of the vagaries of individual human opinion. To better understand
the strengths and limitations of our algorithmic methods, we will compare
our rankings to two prominent published rankings of historical figures.
1 Short descriptions of each member of our top 100 appear in Appendix C, in case you want to
become more familiar with someone.
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1.3.1 M I C H A E L H A R T S T H E 1 0 0
The 100 [Hart, 1992] is probably the best known ranking of historic figures by influence. It has sold more than half a million copies since the first
edition in 1978. I (Steve) owned one of those copies back in high school,
which no doubt stimulated my interest in both history and ranking.
Hart himself is a curious character, with graduate degrees in physics,
astronomy, law, and computer science. His writings embrace a variety
of controversial topics, pegging Edward de Vere (15501604) [1603] as
the author of William Shakespeares (15641616) [4] plays and supporting racial/ethnic separation both in the United States and abroad. Still, his
biographies in The 100 make informed and stimulating reading. We will
study his rankings from the revised 1992 edition of the book.
Harts top 100 and our own share many historical figures in common.
What is more enlightening is to study where our rankings sharply differ.
We start by identifying the ten people in his 100 who are ranked lowest by
our methods.
Bottom of the Hart 100
Us
Hart
Person
Dates
Description
47910
7233
6950
5746
5663
4724
3005
2751
2732
1835
82
37
7
96
61
85
47
83
71
92
Gregory Goodwin Pincus

William T. G. Morton
Cai Lun
Menes
Nikolaus Otto
Emperor Wen of Sui
Louis Daguerre
Mani
Wilhelm Rntgen
Mencius
(19031967)
(18191868)
(A.D. 50121)
(??)
(18321891)
(541604)
(17871851)
(216276)
(18451923)
(372289 B.C.)
American biologist (oral contraceptive pill)

Dentist and pioneer of anesthesia
Chinese inventor (paper)
First pharaoh of ancient Egypt
German inventor (internal combustion engine)
Founder of Chinas Sui Dynasty
French inventor of photography
Prophet and the founder of Manichaeism
German physicist (X-rays)
Chinese thinker (Confucianism)
The least significant member of Harts list is Gregory Goodwin Pincus

(19031967) [47910], who is promoted as the father of the oral contraceptive pill. The Pill has indeed changed the world, but we think he has honored the wrong man (or, in particular, woman) here. Carl Djerassi (1923)
[47277] was the scientist who developed the compound (Norethirsterone)
that became the first practical oral contraceptive. Margaret Sanger (1879
1966) [2672] was the activist who established Planned Parenthood, and
was responsible for the funding that Pincus used to validate Djerassis
compound. We rank Sanger as a far more significant figure than Pincus.
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Harts rankings glorify technological achievement, but his heart lies with
the underdog. We would contest his choice of the seminal figure in several
other areas as well:
Hart credits Nikolaus Otto (18321891) [5663], inventor of the fourstroke internal combustion engine, as the pioneer of the automobile.
But we more highly rank Gottlieb Daimler (18341900) [1461] and Karl
Benz (18441929) [840], who actually built the first cars.
Hart credits Louis Daguerre (17871851) [3005] as the pioneer of photography, but he was just one of several inventors with diverse chemical
processes for recording images, like his rival William Fox Talbot (1800
1877) [2650]. Our choice for the real father of photography was George
Eastman (18541932) [1584], whose invention of roll film and the
Eastman Kodak camera led the way to the modern photographic era.
Hart recognizes Menes [5746], the first pharaoh of the first dynasty. Legend credits him with uniting Upper and Lower Egypt, but there is little
evidence of his existence in the historical record. Instead, we identify
Ramesses II (13021213 B.C.) [293] as the most significant pharaoh, who
ruled Egypt for 66 years during its time of greatest power.
Hart omitted several of our top 100 from his rankings who prove to
be much stronger vessels. We are happy to find room for Abraham Lincoln
(18091865) [5], Henry VIII (14911547) [11], and Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart (17561791) [24] ahead of anesthesia pioneer William T. G. Morton
(18191868) [7233] or Werner Heisenberg (19011976) [1659], a great
scientist but one who doesnt crack our rankings of the top five modern
physicists.
Missing from the Hart 100
Us
4
5
11
16
23
24
26
28
29
31
Hart
Person
William Shakespeare
Abraham Lincoln
Henry VIII
Queen Victoria
Theodore Roosevelt
Louis XIV
Ulysses S. Grant
Leonardo da Vinci
Carl Linnaeus
Dates
Description
(15641616)
(18091865)
(14911547)
(18191901)
(18581919)
(17561791)
(16381715)
(18221885)
(14521519)
(17071778)
English playwright (Hamlet)

16th U.S. president (U.S. Civil War)
Queen of Britain (Victorian Era)
26th U.S. President (Progressive Movement)
King of France ("The Sun King")
Italian artist and polymath ("Mona Lisa")
Swedish biologist (Father of Taxonomy)
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10
1.3.2
LIFE M A G A Z I N ES
100 M O S T I N F L U E N T I A L
FIGURES OF THE MILLENNIUM
The year 2000 provoked many backward glances at mankinds achievements over the past one thousand years, particularly a popular ranking from
Life Magazine (2000). They neglect figures from ancient times and the early
Middle Ages, but we only have twenty-ish figures from these periods ourselves, leaving enough shared people for a reasonable comparison with our
rankings.
The relative order of Lifes rankings correlate better with ours (0.54) than
Harts rankings did (0.31), so we respect their choices more. Still, there are
revealing differences.
Life managed to find room for the Four-Minute Miler Roger Bannister (1929) [11095], Chinese landscape painter Fan Kuan (10201030)
[35313], and medieval music theorist Guido of Arezzo (9911033) [6215].
All were at the expense of George Washington (17321799) [6], Joseph Stalin
(18781953) [18], Winston Churchill (18741965) [37], and others in our
top 100.
Bottom of the Life 100
Us
Life
35313
14490
11095
7177
6215
3774
3302
3005
2799
2061
59
67
92
65
62
99
72
79
96
45
Person
Fan Kuan
Cao Xueqin
Roger Bannister
Hiram Stevens Maxim
Guido of Arezzo
Kwame Nkrumah
Simone de Beauvoir
Louis Daguerre
Jacques Cousteau
Zhu Xi
Dates
Description
(10201030)
(17151763)
(1929)
(18401916)
(9911033)
(19091972)
(19081986)
(17871851)
(19101997)
(11301200)
Chinese landscape painter

Chinese classical writer
English athlete (four-minute mile)
American inventor (Maxim gun)
Medieval music theorist
Founding leader of Ghana
French existentialist philosopher
French inventor of photography
French oceanographic explorer
Chinese Confucian scholar
Missing from the Life 100

Us
6
11
18
23
24
28
32
33
35
36
Life
Person
Dates
Description
George Washington
Henry VIII
Joseph Stalin
Theodore Roosevelt
Ulysses S. Grant
Ronald Reagan
Charles Dickens
Benjamin Franklin
George W. Bush
(17321799)
(14911547)
(18781953)
(18581919)
(17561791)
(18221885)
(19112004)
(18121870)
(17061790)
(1946)
1st U.S. president (American Revolution)

Premier of USSR (World War II)
26th U.S. president (Progressive Movement)
40th U.S. president (Conservative Revolution)
English novelist (David Copperfield)
Founding father/scientist (captured lightning)
43rd U.S. president (Iraq War)
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978-1-107-04137-0 - Who's Bigger?: Where Historical Figures Really Rank

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