Interactive map based on Wikipedia reveals the most notable Hungarians

A newly designed interactive map based on a cross-verified database of notable people (3500BC-2018AD) has recently been shared. The map highlights the notable people from a given settlement, region, state, continent and the world. Your task is only to zoom in or out. Below you can read about the most notable Hungarians the map shows, and the methodology of the compilation.

Interactive map

According to The Verge, the individuals on the map are ranked based on details from their Wikipedia and Wikidata pages. It shows notable people from different fields, including culture, science, leadership, and sports. The father of the interactive visualization is geographer and Mapbox’s senior map designer, Topi Tjukanov.

“Each name featured on the map was determined using a baseline of information scraped from Wikipedia and Wikidata for use in a recent study published in Nature that tried to calculate a person’s notability based on the several rules,” the science magazine wrote. Such rules include the number of Wikipedia editions of the individuals, the length of their biographies or the number of visitors to their pages. You can read all the rules in THIS article.

Interestingly, the map shows that the world’s most notable persons are two former US presidents: Barack Obama (1st) and Donald Trump (2nd). The third one is Leonardo da Vinci, who is also the most notable person in Europe. The fourth on the list is Adolf Hitler. In Latin America, Che Guevara (24th), and in Africa, Nelson Mandela (10th) sit on the “throne”. Furthermore, in Australia, Julian Assange (298), and in Asia, Mahatma Gandhi (11th) are leading the continental championships. Lenin and Stalin, the globe’s two most infamous Communist leaders, are “only” 29.5th.

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Here are the most notable Hungarians, according to the map:

Ferenc Liszt (271st)

If you zoom in on Central Europe, Hungarian names will come out. On the top, there is Ferenc Liszt, probably the most famous Hungarian composer and pianist in the world. He was born in 1811 in Doborján, the Kingdom of Hungary. Doborján is now a district of Oberpullendorf (Felsőpulya), Austria. Liszt’s talent was discovered by his father at a very early age, and he gave his first concert when he was only 9. Afterwards, he continued his studies in Vienna with the help of some wealthy sponsors. Sometimes his nationality is questioned, but his biographers agree he regarded himself as a Hungarian. Among others, experts argue that Liszt never used a non-Hungarian passport and never took the citizenship of another country. Among others, Budapest’s international airport was named after him.

János Neumann (John von Neumann – 486th)

Mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath, John von Neumann was born in 1903, in Budapest. He was regarded as a child prodigy because, at the age of 6, he could “divide two eight-digit numbers in his head and converse in Ancient Greek”, Wikipedia says. He graduated from school in Hungary, earned a degree in Germany and made a career in the USA. Neumann, often regarded as the “father of the computer” successfully contributed to the Manhattan Project, America’s struggle to make the atomic bomb and win WWII.

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Béla Bartók (1151st)

He was a Hungarian composer, pianist, and ethnomusicologist. Born in 1881 in Nagyszentmiklós (today Romania) in the Kingdom of Hungary, “he is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century. He and Ferenc Liszt are regarded as Hungary’s greatest composers. Through his collection and analytical study of folk music, he was one of the founders of comparative musicology, which later became ethnomusicology”, Wikipedia writes.