Josef Mengele

About Josef Mengele

Josef Mengele, a physician who lived from 1911 to 1979, is ranked #488 in historical importance by MIT's Pantheon project, primarily due to his horrific role as a doctor at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. He earned the infamous moniker "the Angel of Death" for performing numerous pseudo-scientific and often fatal experiments on prisoners, including twins and people with physical abnormalities, which contribute significantly to his global cultural impact.

In contrast to his profound historical infamy, Mengele's modern internet attention presents a notable data point in the attention gap. His profile garnered 2.2 million annualized Wikipedia views in 2025. This level of attention is significantly high relative to his historical ranking, resulting in an "overattention" gap calculated at +6x compared to figures of similar importance. For context, this is considerably more attention than figures like Wilhelm II, German Emperor (#175 importance), who received only 463K views in the same period.

Despite his notoriety, the data suggests a slight cooling of peak interest in 2025, as his momentum dropped by -13% between Q1 and Q3, even though his Year-over-Year change remained positive at +10.3%.