Madonna among the most significant Americans of all time.

A special issue of Smithsonian magazine selected Madonna among the 100 most significant Americans of all time.

Steven Skiena and Charles B. Ward (Skiena is the Distinguished Teaching Professor of Computer Science at Stony Brook University and a co-founder of the social-analytics company General Sentiment. Ward is an engineer at Google, specializing in ranking methodologies.) rank people according to their historical significance, which they define as “the result of social and cultural forces acting on the mass of an individual’s achievement.” Their rankings account not only for what individuals have done, but also for how well others remember and value them for it.



Here’s the Pop Icons list:

Mark Twain
Elvis Presley
Madonna
Bob Dylan
Michael Jackson
Charlie Chaplin
Jimi Hendrix
Marilyn Monroe
Frank Sinatra
Louis Armstrong
Mary Pickford

There’s only one Queen and that’s Madonna!