Daniel Lemire's blog

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Remarkable scientists without a wikipedia page

I was surprised today to learn that Michael Ley’s wikipedia page had been deleted (because it failed to indicate the significance of the subject). I have yet to meet anyone in Computer Science or Information Technology who does not know about the DBLP Computer Science Bibliography. Michael has received numerous prestigious awards for his work. He is a remarkable pioneer.

But there are other remarkable people without a wikipedia page. Patrick O’Neil is another good example. Consider the citations that some of his papers received (according to Google Scholar):

  • The dangers of replication and a solution: cited 1036 times;
  • The LRU-K page replacement algorithm for database disk buffering: cited 515 times;
  • Improved query performance with variant indexes: cited 421 times;
  • ORDPATHs: insert-friendly XML node labels: cited 273 times.

Chances are that if you have ever used a database engine at all, it implemented an algorithm or a technique related to the O’Neil’s work.

How many other remarkable scientists don’t have a wikipedia page?

Update: Thanks to Ragib Hasan and David Eppstein, these two computer scientists now have wikipedia pages (see Ley and O’Neil).