User:Zelkia1101/Vital people

This is a personal project that runs concurrent with the Wikipedia:Vital articles project. That project selects what its members consider to be the most important Wikipedia articles and sorts them into different rankings.

My project focuses solely on articles of people or groups of people. In order to feature on this list, the Wikipedia article in question must be about a specific real individual (no mythological figures). Level 1 is the listing of 50 people whose contributions to world history are so substantial that everyone alive should at least have some general knowledge about who they are. Level 2 contains 500 biographies of individuals whose contributions to world history are essential that they feature most often on Wikipedia pages. Level 3 contains 5,000 biographies.

Decisions as to where a biography goes are made based on a determination of historical vitality, which involves judging a person's influence, the prominence of their thought or ideas, and the pervasiveness of their name or beliefs in popular culture. Other factors, such as historical rankings or pageviews, are sometimes taken into account.

If you have any suggestions on how this list could be changed, feel free to leave them on the talk page.

I have finished Level 1 and Level 2. Level 3 is in the works. This is the page for Level 2.

Please visit this page's talk page to view the change log.

Level 1

Top 100

Level 2

Level 3

People (500 articles)

Entertainers and directors (25 articles)

Actors, comedians, and performers (15 articles)

1. Julie Andrews
2. Lucille Ball
3. Sarah Bernhardt
4. Humphrey Bogart
5. Marlon Brando
6. Clint Eastwood
7. Judy Garland
8. Audrey Hepburn
9. Katharine Hepburn
10. Harry Houdini
11. Madhubala
12. Marilyn Monroe
13. Monty Python
14. Laurence Olivier
15. John Wayne

Directors and screenwriters (10 articles)

1. Charlie Chaplin
2. Walt Disney
3. D. W. Griffith
4. Alfred Hitchcock
5. Stanley Kubrick
6. Akira Kurosawa
7. Leni Riefenstahl
8. Martin Scorsese
9. Andrei Tarkovsky
10. Orson Welles

Visual artists (35 articles)

Painters (22 articles)

1. Hieronymus Bosch
2. Pieter Bruegel the Elder
3. Caravaggio
4. Salvador Dalí
5. Jacques-Louis David
6. Albrecht Dürer
7. Vincent van Gogh
8. Francisco Goya
9. El Greco
10. Hokusai
11. Frida Kahlo
12. René Magritte
13. Henri Matisse
14. Claude Monet
15. Georgia O'Keeffe
16. Pablo Picasso
17. Raphael
18. Rembrandt
19. Peter Paul Rubens
20. Leonardo da Vinci (Level 1)
21. Johannes Vermeer
22. Andy Warhol

Cartoonists and illustrators (3 articles)

1. Hergé
2. Norman Rockwell
3. Dr. Seuss

Sculptors (3 articles)

1. Gian Lorenzo Bernini
2. Michelangelo (Level 1)
3. Auguste Rodin

Architects (6 articles)

1. Filippo Brunelleschi
2. Le Corbusier
3. Antoni Gaudí
4. Imhotep
5. Vitruvius
6. Frank Lloyd Wright

Photographers (1 article)

1. Ansel Adams

Writers (50 articles)

Ancient (8 articles)

1. Aeschylus
2. Aesop
3. Euripides
4. Homer (Level 1)
5. Ovid
6. Sappho
7. Sophocles
8. Virgil

Post-classical (8 articles)

1. Dante Alighieri (Level 1)
2. Geoffrey Chaucer
3. Du Fu
4. Omar Khayyam
5. Li Bai
6. Petrarch
7. Rumi
8. Murasaki Shikibu

Early modern (8 articles)

1. William Blake
2. Miguel de Cervantes
3. Matsuo Bashō
4. John Milton
5. Molière
6. William Shakespeare (Level 1)
7. Jonathan Swift
8. Voltaire

Modern (26 articles)

1. Chinua Achebe
2. Hans Christian Andersen
3. Jane Austen
4. Lord Byron
5. Albert Camus
6. Agatha Christie
7. Charles Dickens
8. Emily Dickinson
9. Fyodor Dostoevsky
10. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
11. Ernest Hemingway
12. Victor Hugo
13. Henrik Ibsen
14. James Joyce
15. Franz Kafka
16. Gabriel García Márquez
17. Yukio Mishima
18. Toni Morrison
19. George Orwell
20. Edgar Allan Poe
21. Rabindranath Tagore
22. J. R. R. Tolkien
23. Leo Tolstoy (Level 1)
24. Mark Twain
25. Walt Whitman
26. Virginia Woolf

Musicians (35 articles)

Art music (18 articles)

1. Johann Sebastian Bach
2. Ludwig van Beethoven (Level 1)
3. Johannes Brahms
4. Frédéric Chopin
5. Claude Debussy
6. George Frideric Handel
7. Joseph Haydn
8. Edward Elgar
9. Hildegard of Bingen
10. Franz Liszt
11. Gustav Mahler
12. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Level 1)
13. Niccolò Paganini
14. Ravi Shankar
15. Igor Stravinsky
16. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
17. Antonio Vivaldi
18. Richard Wagner

Popular music (17 articles)

1. Louis Armstrong
2. The Beatles
3. Chuck Berry
4. Johnny Cash
5. Miles Davis
6. Bob Dylan
7. Marvin Gaye
8. Billie Holiday
9. Michael Jackson
10. Aretha Franklin
11. Umm Kulthum
12. Fela Kuti
13. Bob Marley
14. Édith Piaf
15. Elvis Presley
16. Frank Sinatra
17. Selena

Businesspeople (10 articles)

1. Al Capone
2. Andrew Carnegie
3. Marcus Licinius Crassus
4. Henry Ford
5. Jakob Fugger
6. Bill Gates
7. Steve Jobs
8. J. P. Morgan
9. John D. Rockefeller
10. Cornelius Vanderbilt

Explorers (25 articles)

Land exploration (8 articles)

1. Roald Amundsen
2. Ibn Battuta
3. Samuel de Champlain
4. David Livingstone
5. Marco Polo (Level 1)
6. Robert Falcon Scott
7. Ernest Shackleton
8. Henry Morton Stanley

Sea exploration (10 articles)

1. Jacques Cartier
2. Leif Erikson
3. Christopher Columbus (Level 1)
4. James Cook
5. Vasco da Gama (Level 1)
6. Ferdinand Magellan
7. Juan Ponce de León
8. Hernando de Soto
9. Amerigo Vespucci
10. Zheng He

Air and space exploration (7 articles)

1. Buzz Aldrin
2. Neil Armstrong
3. Amelia Earhart
4. Yuri Gagarin
5. John Glenn
6. Charles Lindbergh
7. Valentina Tereshkova

Philosophers and social scientists (55 articles)

Ancient (14 articles)

1. Aristotle (Level 1)
2. Augustine of Hippo
3. Cicero
4. Confucius (Level 1)
5. Diogenes
6. Epicurus
7. Herodotus
8. Laozi
9. Plato (Level 1)
10. Pāṇini
11. Pythagoras
12. Socrates
13. Sun Tzu
14. Thucydides

Post-classical (5 articles)

1. Avicenna
2. Thomas Aquinas
3. Erasmus
4. Ibn Khaldun
5. Niccolò Machiavelli

Early modern (18 articles)

1. Francis Bacon
2. Jeremy Bentham
3. Edmund Burke
4. René Descartes (Level 1)
5. Denis Diderot
6. Thomas Hobbes
7. David Hume
8. William Jones
9. Immanuel Kant
10. John Locke (Level 1)
11. Thomas Robert Malthus
12. Michel de Montaigne
13. Montesquieu
14. David Ricardo
15. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
16. Adam Smith (Level 1)
17. Baruch Spinoza
18. Mary Wollstonecraft

Modern (18 articles)

1. Simone de Beauvoir
2. Franz Boas
3. John Dewey
4. Friedrich Engels
5. Sigmund Freud (Level 1)
6. William James
7. Carl Jung
8. John Maynard Keynes
9. Søren Kierkegaard
10. Karl Marx (Level 1)
11. John Stuart Mill
12. Friedrich Nietzche
13. Ivan Pavlov
14. Bertrand Russell
15. Arthur Schopenhauer
16. Alexis de Tocqueville
17. Max Weber
18. Ludwig Wittgenstein

Religious figures (30 articles)

Abrahamic religions (22 articles)

Christianity (16 articles)

1. John Calvin
2. Francis of Assisi
3. Saint George
4. Ignatius of Loyola
5. Jesus (Level 1)
6. John the Apostle
7. John the Baptist
8. Judas Iscariot
9. Pope John Paul II
10. John Knox
11. Martin Luther (Level 1)
12. Mary, mother of Jesus
13. Saints Cyril and Methodius
14. Paul the Apostle (Level 1)
15. Saint Peter
16. Grigori Rasputin

Islam (5 articles)

1. Aisha
2. Ali
3. Abu Bakr
4. Muhammad (Level 1)
5. Omar

Judaism (1 article)

1. Maimonides

Eastern religions (8 articles)

Buddhism (3 articles)

1. Gautama Buddha (Level 1)
2. Nagarjuna
3. Kūkai

Hinduism (3 articles)

1. Adi Shankara
2. Swami Vivekananda
3. Vyasa

Other (2 articles)

1. Mahavira
2. Zoroaster

Political and military leaders (115 articles)

Ancient (20 articles)

1. Alexander the Great (Level 1)
2. Ashoka
3. Attila
4. Augustus (Level 1)
5. Marcus Aurelius
6. Julius Caesar (Level 1)
7. Chandragupta Maurya
8. Cleopatra
9. Constantine the Great
10. Cyrus the Great (Level 1)
11. Hammurabi
12. Hannibal
13. Hatshepsut
14. Leonidas I
15. Nebuchadnezzar II
16. Pericles
17. Qin Shi Huang (Level 1)
18. Ramesses II
19. Sargon of Akkad
20. Trajan

Post-classical (20 articles)

1. Pope Alexander VI
2. Alfred the Great
3. Charlemagne (Level 1)
4. Edward I of England
5. Edward III of England
6. Ferdinand II of Aragon
7. Genghis Khan (Level 1)
8. Isabella I of Castile
9. Joan of Arc
10. John, King of England
11. Justinian I
12. Kublai Khan
13. Mansa Musa
14. Saladin
15. Timur
16. Pope Urban II
17. Vlad the Impaler
18. William Wallace
19. William the Conqueror
20. Wu Zetian

Early modern (25 articles)

1. Akbar
2. Babur
3. Catherine the Great
4. Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis
5. Charles I of England
6. Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
7. Hernán Cortés
8. Oliver Cromwell
9. Elizabeth I (Level 1)
10. Francis I of France
11. Frederick the Great
12. Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden
13. Alexander Hamilton
14. Henry V of England
15. Henry VIII
16. Tokugawa Ieyasu
17. James VI and I
18. Thomas Jefferson
19. Louis XIV
20. Marie Antoinette
21. Napoleon (Level 1)
22. Peter the Great
23. Cardinal Richelieu
24. Suleiman the Magnificent
25. George Washington (Level 1)

Modern (50 articles)

Africa (6 articles)

1. Idi Amin
2. Haile Selassie
3. Nelson Mandela (Level 1)
4. Gamal Abdel Nasser
5. Cecil Rhodes
6. Shaka

Asia (11 articles)

1. Corazon Aquino
2. Deng Xiaoping
3. Indira Gandhi
4. Hirohito
5. Ho Chi Minh
6. Muhammad Ali Jinnah
7. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
8. Mao Zedong (Level 1)
9. Jawaharlal Nehru
10. Pol Pot
11. Sun Yat-sen

Western Europe (10 articles)

1. Otto von Bismarck
2. Winston Churchill
3. Charles de Gaulle
4. Heinrich Himmler
5. Adolf Hitler (Level 1)
6. Leopold II of Belgium
7. David Lloyd George
8. Margaret Thatcher
9. Queen Victoria
10. Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

Southern and Eastern Europe (9 articles)

1. Francisco Franco
2. Giuseppe Garibaldi
3. Mikhail Gorbachev
4. Nikita Khrushchev
5. Vladimir Lenin (Level 1)
6. Benito Mussolini
7. Nicholas II of Russia
8. Joseph Stalin
9. Josip Broz Tito

Latin America (5 articles)

1. Simón Bolívar
2. Fidel Castro
3. Toussaint Louverture
4. Antonio López de Santa Anna
5. José de San Martín

United States (9 articles)

1. Dwight D. Eisenhower
2. Andrew Jackson
3. John F. Kennedy
4. Robert E. Lee
5. Abraham Lincoln
6. Douglas MacArthur
7. Ronald Reagan
8. Franklin D. Roosevelt
9. Theodore Roosevelt

Rebels, activists, and social workers (20 articles)

1. B. R. Ambedkar
2. Susan B. Anthony
3. Steve Biko
4. Blackbeard
5. John Brown
6. Bartolomé de las Casas
7. Frederick Douglass
8. Mahatma Gandhi (Level 1)
9. Che Guevara
10. Theodor Herzl
11. Helen Keller
12. Martin Luther King Jr.
13. Osama bin Laden
14. Maximilien Robespierre
15. Rosa Parks
16. Margaret Sanger
17. Spartacus
18. William Wilberforce
19. Mother Teresa
20. Harriet Tubman

Scientists, mathematicians, and inventors (90 articles)

Ancient figures (8 articles)

1. Archimedes (Level 1)
2. Brahmagupta
3. Fibonacci
4. Jabir ibn Hayyan
5. Hypatia
6. Hippocrates
7. Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi
8. Ptolemy

Physics (16 articles)

1. Niels Bohr
2. John Dalton
3. Albert Einstein (Level 1)
4. Michael Faraday
5. Enrico Fermi
6. Richard Feynman
7. Stephen Hawking
8. Werner Heisenberg
9. Christiaan Huygens
10. James Clerk Maxwell
11. Isaac Newton (Level 1)
12. J. Robert Oppenheimer
13. Max Planck
14. Ernest Rutherford
15. Erwin Schrödinger
16. J. J. Thomson

Astronomy (6 articles)

1. Nicolaus Copernicus (Level 1)
2. Galileo Galilei (Level 1)
3. William Herschel
4. Edwin Hubble
5. Johannes Kepler
6. Carl Sagan

Chemistry (12 articles)

1. Svante Arrhenius
2. Robert Boyle
3. Marie Curie (Level 1)
4. Humphry Davy
5. Rosalind Franklin
6. Fritz Haber
7. Otto Hahn
8. Dorothy Hodgkin
9. Antoine Lavoisier
10. Dmitri Mendeleev
11. Linus Pauling
12. Joseph Priestley

Life sciences (14 articles)

1. Norman Borlaug
2. Rachel Carson
3. George Washington Carver
4. Charles Darwin (Level 1)
5. Alexander Fleming
6. William Harvey
7. Edward Jenner
8. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
9. Carl Linnaeus
10. Joseph Lister
11. Gregor Mendel
12. Florence Nightingale
13. Louis Pasteur (Level 1)
14. Jonas Salk

Inventors and engineers (16 articles)

1. Alexander Graham Bell
2. Isambard Kingdom Brunel
3. Wernher von Braun
4. Cai Lun
5. Thomas Edison (Level 1)
6. Gustave Eiffel
7. Benjamin Franklin
8. Johannes Gutenberg (Level 1)
9. Guglielmo Marconi
10. Samuel Morse
11. Alfred Nobel
12. Wilhelm Röntgen
13. Nikola Tesla
14. James Watt
15. Eli Whitney
16. Wright brothers

Mathematicians (18 articles)

1. Jacob Bernoulli
2. Georg Cantor
3. Leonhard Euler (Level 1)
4. Fibonacci
5. Ronald Fisher
6. Carl Friedrich Gauss
7. Kurt Gödel
8. David Hilbert
9. Pierre-Simon Laplace
10. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
11. Ada Lovelace
12. John von Neumann
13. Emmy Noether
14. Blaise Pascal
15. Henri Poincaré
16. Srinivasa Ramanujan
17. Bernhard Riemann
18. Alan Turing

Sports figures (10 articles)

1. Muhammad Ali
2. Wilt Chamberlain
3. Bobby Fischer
4. Edmund Hillary
5. Bruce Lee
6. Diego Maradona
7. Jesse Owens
8. Pelé
9. Jackie Robinson
10. Babe Ruth