INVENTOR

Barnes Wallis

1887 - 1979

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Icon of person Barnes Wallis

Sir Barnes Neville Wallis (26 September 1887 – 30 October 1979) was an English engineer and inventor. He is best known for inventing the bouncing bomb used by the Royal Air Force in Operation Chastise (the "Dambusters" raid) to attack the dams of the Ruhr Valley during World War II. The raid was the subject of the 1955 film The Dam Busters, in which Wallis was played by Michael Redgrave. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Barnes Wallis has received more than 901,875 page views. His biography is available in 26 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 24 in 2019). Barnes Wallis is the 382nd most popular inventor (down from 327th in 2019), the 4,480th most popular biography from United Kingdom (down from 3,630th in 2019) and the 64th most popular British Inventor.

Memorability Metrics

  • 900k

    Page Views (PV)

  • 45.13

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 26

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 1.89

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 4.23

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Page views of Barnes Wallis by language

Over the past year Barnes Wallis has had the most page views in the with 122,014 views, followed by Russian (4,364), and French (2,644). In terms of yearly growth of page views the top 3 wikpedia editions are West Frisian (87.15%), Egyptian Arabic (56.04%), and Persian (50.00%)

Among INVENTORS

Among inventors, Barnes Wallis ranks 382 out of 426Before him are Alfred Carlton Gilbert, William Fothergill Cooke, Karl Jatho, Wordsworth Donisthorpe, Harold Eugene Edgerton, and Kálmán Tihanyi. After him are Elmer Ambrose Sperry, Mohamed M. Atalla, Herbert E. Ives, Robert S. Langer, Oleg Losev, and John Shepherd-Barron.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1887, Barnes Wallis ranks 257Before him are Emil Magnusson, L. S. Lowry, Arne Halse, Teodor Koskenniemi, Charles Reisner, and Florence Price. After him are Sigmund Romberg, Gustaf Rosenquist, Jorge de Paiva, Robinson Jeffers, Nils Middelboe, and Nils Granfelt. Among people deceased in 1979, Barnes Wallis ranks 231Before him are Blas de Otero, Imre Harangi, Eduardo González Valiño, Les Clark, Ben Lyon, and Juan Aguilera. After him are Arthur Hunnicutt, Loren Murchison, Sven Utterström, Ann Dvorak, Judee Sill, and Ahmet Kireççi.

Others Born in 1887

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Others Deceased in 1979

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In United Kingdom

Among people born in United Kingdom, Barnes Wallis ranks 4,480 out of 8,785Before him are Chris Craft (1939), Tommy Gemmell (1943), Paul Carrack (1951), Anne-Marie Duff (1970), John Aitken (1839), and Augustus John (1878). After him are Richard Taylor (1962), William Sterndale Bennett (1816), John Farnham (1949), Sam Tingle (1921), Jonathan Lynn (1943), and Jimmy Stewart (1931).

Among INVENTORS In United Kingdom

Among inventors born in United Kingdom, Barnes Wallis ranks 64Before him are John Milne (1850), Isaac Pitman (1813), William Friese-Greene (1855), Kirkpatrick Macmillan (1835), William Fothergill Cooke (1806), and Wordsworth Donisthorpe (1847). After him are John Whitehurst (1713), Roger C. Field (1945), Lawrence Hargrave (1850), and Frank Hornby (1863).