User:Maurreen copied this list from a version of the page on 24 Oct 2007. The names are still believed to be correct, as of 14 Feb 2010. But quality levels have changed.
Listing by field should help give us an idea of the breadth of the list.
CORE BIOGRAPHIES
This page has been developed by the
Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography to be a list of the 200 most important biographies in WP as a way to have a work list of articles to improve. Any such list will be subjective and unlikely to find universal agreement.
Biography (core) pages by quality
|
Quality
|
Total
|
FA
|
34
|
GA
|
40
|
B
|
91
|
C
|
35
|
Assessed
|
200
|
Total
|
200
|
WikiWork factors (?)
|
ω = 493
|
Ω = 2.46
|
For the time being, we are no longer accepting any suggestions to change the list.
Currently, this is being used as a worklist for the Version 1.0 Editorial Team. The live worklist can be found at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Biographies. It is essentially a work list for anyone who chooses to use it.
Biographies followed by (R) are on Wikipedia's Most Referenced Articles
Announcements/To do (
edit)
Add this to-do list to your User page! ((Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Core biographies/Core biographies announcements))
/Archive 1
- A list of "The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History" [1], chosen by Michael H. Hart.
- 1,000 Years, 1,000 People: Ranking the Men and Women Who Shaped the Millennium (Book published in 1998)
- Life magazine's list of the Top 100 people who made the Millennium, ranked in order of importance.
- Lists by Charles Murray, from the book "Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 BC to 1950", compiled mathematically
- 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written, from book by Martin Seymour-Smith
- Time magazine's 100 people of the century
See also: Wikipedia talk:Core biographies/Published Lists
For placement on this list, consider the following criteria.
- Top - Must have had a large impact outside of their main discipline, across several generations, and in the majority of the world. For instance, Einstein, brilliant physicist, but his theories have affected people outside of physics and in many other countries besides his nation of origin and several generations. His ideas have changed the way people think. No member should give this rating to any biography without first getting Project approval from the other members.
For an understanding of how "Top" relates to potential lower-importance categories, keep this in mind, as it might help decide if a biography is really "Top" or "High," etc.:
- High - Must have had a large impact in their main discipline, across a couple of generations. Had some impact outside their country of origin.
- Mid - Important in their discipline
- Low - A contributor to their discipline and is included in Wikipedia to expand depth of knowledge of other articles.
Arts and entertainment, 60[edit]
Athletes and related, 7[edit]
- Muhammad Ali
Michael Jordan
- Bruce Lee
Pelé
- Jackie Robinson
- Babe Ruth
- Jesse Owens
Artists and architects, 11[edit]
- Giotto di Bondone
Vincent van Gogh
- Michelangelo
- Claude Monet
- Pablo Picasso
- Raphael
Rembrandt
Auguste Rodin
Leonardo da Vinci
- Andy Warhol
- Frank Lloyd Wright
Music, 7[edit]
- Johann Sebastian Bach
The Beatles (R)
- Ludwig van Beethoven
Michael Jackson
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Elvis Presley
- Giuseppe Verdi
Performing arts misc., 5[edit]
- Charlie Chaplin
- Walt Disney
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Akira Kurosawa
- Mikhail Baryshnikov
Writers, 30[edit]
- Non-Western, 0
Ancient world, 3[edit]
Aeschylus
- Homer
- Virgil
English language, 15[edit]
- Jane Austen
- Lord Byron
- Charles Dickens
- T.S. Eliot
Ernest Hemingway
James Joyce
- John Milton
Edgar Allan Poe
- Ezra Pound
William Shakespeare
- Walter Scott
- Mark Twain
Walt Whitman
W. B. Yeats
- William Wordsworth
Continental European languages, 12[edit]
- Dante Alighieri
Jorge Luis Borges
- Miguel de Cervantes
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Brothers Grimm
- Victor Hugo
- Henrik Ibsen
- Franz Kafka
- Marcel Proust
- Leo Tolstoy
- Voltaire
|
Leaders and public figures, 68[edit]
Politicians and leaders, 51[edit]
Americas, 7[edit]
- Simón Bolívar
- Hernando Cortes
- Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Jefferson
- Abraham Lincoln
Franklin D. Roosevelt
George Washington
Asia and Africa, 15[edit]
- Africa, 4
- Cleopatra VII of Egypt
- Hannibal
- Nelson Mandela
- Shaka
- Asia, to 1000 AD, 4
Cyrus the Great, 500s, Persia
Hammurabi, 1700s BC, Babylon
- Qin Shi Huang, 200s BC, China
- Emperor Taizong of Tang, 600s, China
- Asia, 1000 to 1899 AD, 5
- Akbar, 1500s, Central Asia, Mughal Empire
- Genghis Khan, 1200s, Mongol Empire, SE Asia
- Saladin, 1100s, Egypt
Suleiman the Magnificent, 1500s. Ottoman Empire
- Timur, 1300s, Central Asia
- Asia, 20th century, 2
- Ho Chi Minh, 1900s, Vietnam
- Mao Zedong, 1900s, China
Europe, 29[edit]
- Ancient world to 500 AD, 5
- Alexander the Great
- Attila the Hun
Augustus
- Constantine I
- Julius Caesar
- 500 AD to 1600 AD, 6
Charlemagne
- Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
- Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor
- Heraclius
- Ivan IV of Russia
- Philip II of Spain
- British Isles, 6
- Winston Churchill
- Edmund Burke
Elizabeth I of England
- Henry II of England
- Henry VIII of England
- William I of England (William the Conqueror)
- France, 3
Joan of Arc
- Louis XIV of France (the Sun King)
- Napoleon I of France
- Germany, 3
- Otto von Bismarck
- Frederick the Great
- Adolf Hitler
- Russia, 5
- Catherine the Great
- Mikhail Gorbachev
- Vladimir Lenin
- Peter I of Russia
- Joseph Stalin
- Elsewhere, 1
- Benito Mussolini
Religious figures, 9[edit]
- Augustine of Hippo
- Gautama Buddha
John Calvin
- Francis of Assisi
Jesus (R)
- Martin Luther
- Muhammad
- Paul the Apostle
- Zoroaster
Revolutionaries and activists, 7[edit]
- Frederick Douglass
Mahatma Gandhi
Che Guevara
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Margaret Sanger
Mother Teresa
Mary Wollstonecraft
|
Thinkers and explorers, 73[edit]
Explorers, 5[edit]
Neil Armstrong
- Christopher Columbus
- Ferdinand Magellan
- Marco Polo
- Zheng He
Inventors and scientists, 32[edit]
Biologists and doctors, 7[edit]
Hippocrates
Charles Darwin
Carolus Linnaeus
- Alexander Fleming
- Joseph Lister
- Gregor Mendel
- Louis Pasteur
Inventors, 9[edit]
- Charles Babbage
- Alexander Graham Bell
- Louis Daguerre
Thomas Edison
- Johann Gutenberg
- Henry Ford
- Guglielmo Marconi
- Cai Lun
Wright brothers
Physical scientists, 17[edit]
- Nicolaus Copernicus
- Marie Curie
Albert Einstein
- Michael Faraday
- Galileo Galilei
- Stephen Hawking
Johannes Kepler
- Antoine Lavoisier
- James Clerk Maxwell
Isaac Newton
- Robert Oppenheimer
- Linus Pauling
- Max Planck
- Ptolemy
- Ernest Rutherford
Nikola Tesla
- James Watt
Mathematicians, 9[edit]
Archimedes
- Euclid
Leonhard Euler
- Pierre de Fermat
Carl Friedrich Gauss
- Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi
- Gottfried Leibniz
Blaise Pascal
- Pythagoras
Philosophers, 18[edit]
Ancient China, 3[edit]
- Confucius
- Laozi
- Sun Tzu
Ancient Greece, 3[edit]
- Aristotle
- Plato
- Socrates
Middle Ages and modern, 12[edit]
Thomas Aquinas
- Francis Bacon
- René Descartes
- Thomas Hobbes
David Hume
- Immanuel Kant
Søren Kierkegaard
- John Locke
- Niccolò Machiavelli
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Henry David Thoreau
Social scientists, 9[edit]
- Sigmund Freud
- Edward Gibbon
- Herodotus
- John Maynard Keynes
- Karl Marx
- Thomas Malthus
- Adam Smith
Thucydides
Max Weber
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Noting these, for the sake of breadth: