Adolf Hitler: unfortunately influential.

According to incoming links, the most influential person is Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus who developed the naming system for plants and animals used today, followed by Jesus, Napoleon and Hitler.

But according to the links that flow out of each page, the most influential person is Adolf Hitler, followed by Michael Jackson, Madonna and Beethoven.

While the findings don't include musings as to why the relatively little-known Linnaeus has so many links, a quick Wikipedia search of a few animals connects their scienifitic name to pages of taxonomy, and from there to the botanist.

Coordinated by Young-Ho Eom, the exploration was an attempt to identify influencers beyond the local scope of most enquiries.

Michael Jackson: among the world's most influential people according to Wikipedia.

Applying the same methodology within just one language creates distinctly different results for each language.

Based on their PageRank score (pages linking into their biography page), the most influential three people are:

Madonna: one of Wikipedia's most influential women.

English: Napoleon, Barack Obama, Carl Linnaeus

Greek: Alexander the Great, Jesus, Aristotle

Chinese: Carl Linnaeus, Mao Zedong, Napoleon

Hebrew: Benazir Bhutto, Yitzhak Rabin, Neil Armstrong

Italian: Napoleon, Aristotle, Jesus

The 2d Ranks (outgoing links) are even more localised.

English: Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Pope Pius XII

Greek: Plato, Alexander the Great, Eleftherios Venizelos

Chinese: Chiang Kai-Shek, Mao Zedong, Emperor Taizong of Tang

Hebrew: Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, David Ben-Gurion

Italian: Pope Bendict XVI, Raphael, Giuseppe Garibaldi

The lists, like history, are dominated by men. The most influential women include several queens of England, Agatha Christie, Mariah Carey, Indira Ghandi and Catherine the Great.

The internationalised data was also used to identify which cultures have been the most influential beyond just their own language groups and empires.

Greek, Arabic and Turkish cultures were dominant until the 1700s, when English and German took over.