How Hitler outranks Churchill: Scientists create a program to show how significant historical figures are based on web pages

He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures of modern times whose death was mourned across the globe.
But Nelson Mandela ranks just 356th in a table of people’s historical importance created by a Google engineer using similar systems to the way the search engine ranks web pages.
Jesus tops the list with Napoleon second and Muhammad third.

Winston Churchill (right) is ranked 37th, thirty places behind Adolf Hitler (left). The British wartime leader is  ranked lower than former US President George W Bush although he is the highest placed Prime Minister

William Shakespeare is the highest placed Briton in fourth position, while David Cameron is way down in 1,483rd spot.
Winston Churchill is ranked 37th, thirty places behind Adolf Hitler.
The British wartime leader is also ranked lower than former US Presidents George W Bush and Ronald Reagan.
But Churchill is by far the highest placed Prime Minister, ahead of Margaret Thatcher in 271st and Tony Blair in 584th.
Queen Elizabeth I is the highest ranked woman at 13, three places above Queen Victoria.They are two of just three women in the top hundred, along with Joan of Arc.
The list was compiled using a programme which mainly draws on how significant someone’s entry is on internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia as well as mentions on online newspaper reports, books published on the web and other parts of the internet.
The system gives equal weight to both celebrity and gravitas, but aims to assess people’s long term fame by including a ‘reputation decay’ mathematical formula which predicts their impact up to 200 years after they die.
Britney Spears would be ranked 27th most significant person on her current fame but drops to 689th when the decay formula is applied.

Table: Nelson Mandela ranks just 356th in a table of people¿s historical importance created by a Google engineer using similar systems to the way the search engine ranks web pages

Steven Skiena, professor of computer science at New York’s Stony Brook University and co creator of the formula, said Mandela’s apparently lowly position was a ‘fair ranking.’ He said: ‘Bigger does not mean better.
‘Mandela is the highest ranked African leader and a few places above Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, which makes sense.
‘Both men could be viewed as founders of their respective nations and therefore of similar significance in the long term.’
He said the software suggested that a third of historical figures currently studied in U.S. school are relatively ‘obscure’ and had little impact on modern society.
He added: ‘The quantitative approach to ranking someone’s significance provides another way to look at many things, not just history.
‘I suspect about a third of workers hired by companies from a pool of candidates are not the best people for the job.

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‘A more scientific approach might be a way of helping to correct inevitable human errors.’
But historian Antony Beevor said the idea that historical significance could be reduced to a formula was ‘preposterous’.
‘You simply cannot calibrate history and assess it in that way,’ he said.
‘It’s just a question of how they construct their algorithm and how they view their weightings.’
Professor Skiena and his colleague Charles Ward, an engineer with Google, have published their findings in a book called Who’s Bigger? Where Historical Figures Really Rank.
It names Mozart as the most significant musician in history at 24th, three places ahead of Beethoven and 24 ahead of Bach, according to the list.
Elvis Presley is the highest-ranked pop star, at 69th, followed by Madonna, 121st, Bob Dylan, 130th, and John Lennon, 162nd.

Musical greats: Elvis Presley (left) is the highest-ranked pop star, at 69th, followed by Madonna (right) at 121