Ranked by fame on Wikipedia: language editions times page views of the last 12 months. Each person is on one board only.
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Photo credits
- Portraits are freely licensed Wikimedia Commons files; the rest are public domain. Attribution:
- Tim Berners-Lee: Web Summit · CC BY 2.0
- Richard Feynman: Copyright Tamiko Thiel 1984 · CC BY-SA 3.0
Rules & what counts
Most Famous Scientists Quiz: Rules & What Counts
This quiz shows 20 portrait cards, ranked from 1 to 20. Each card is one of the 20 most famous scientists in the world. Type the person's name to solve the card.
Each card shows the portrait and the rank. The name, the country, the occupation and the years appear when you solve the card.
Fame is measured on Wikipedia. The score is the number of language editions with an article about the person, multiplied by the English Wikipedia page views of the last 12 months. The board updates from time to time.
How to play
- Just start typing. The quiz checks your answer at every keystroke. There is no submit button.
- A correct name solves the card and shows the full name, the country, the occupation and the years.
- You can answer in any order. The name you type solves the matching card wherever it sits.
- Everyday names count. A surname alone, a pen name and a common nickname are accepted.
- Spelling is forgiving. Capitals, accents and punctuation are ignored.
- The timer starts at your first keystroke and counts up. Give Up ends the run and shows every person you missed. Progress saves automatically.
What counts in this quiz
- The 20 scientists with the highest fame score, from every country and every century.
- A person counts as a scientist when the first line of the person's Wikipedia description says so. Many of these people did more than one thing, so each person is on one board only.
- A pen name or a stage name counts as the name. A surname alone counts when only one person on the board has it.
What's not included, and why
- People outside the top 20 do not count. A guess that is not on the board changes nothing. There is no penalty.
- Legendary figures are not on the boards. There is no real picture of them.
- People famous mainly for mass murder, terrorism or organised crime are not on the boards.
Good to know
- Albert Einstein is the most famous of all scientists on this board. Albert Einstein is a German physicist.
- The last card, number 20, is Carl Sagan, an American physicist.
- Avicenna is the oldest name on the board: 980–1037.
- 5 of the 20 scientists are American.