Not sure if this has been on the Café; the search engine didn't provide any hits. In any event, here's an interesting look at how the general public ranks Magicians.

Doug Henning is in the top 10.

http://www.ranker.com/list/greatest-famo......adotking

Cor blimey! I had a good look at that list, and my memory got jogged quite a bit. Thanks for posting.

Will

Woooow... Really interesting to see that Smoothini and Neil Patrick Harris are above, for example, Jean-Eugene Robert Houdin.
It's obvious though, considering laymen don't know (and have no reason to know) Robert Houdin.

I enjoyed the list, thank you!

From what I've seen it most certainly isn't any actual magicians doing the voting. Houdini at #1 is to be expected and I have no argument there, however, Criss Angel is currently in the #7 spot while Lance Burton is at #10, Dai Vernon is at #16, Michael Ammar . . . #36, really? #36, huh? So what they're trying to say is that Dynamo who is at #5 is a better magician than Michael Ammar? And I don't even see Harry Lorayne, or Max Maven.

Tommy Wonder anyone??? NO TOMMY WONDER ON THE LIST!? WHAT!??!?!

Jeff McBride is #38. OK, so Neil Patrick Harris at #28 is a better magician than Jeff, right? Yeah, that's perfectly logical, sure, of course, that's a no brainer. I mean...who wouldn't think that? It's common knowledge that NPH is superior to Jeff McBride who has only been performing magic for over 40 years when Neil was in diapers...WHAT!? Neil Patrick Harris is 10 spots higher than Jeff McBride!? WHAT!?

Don't get me wrong, Neil seems like a fairly cool, nice, sweet and gracious man. I'm sure he is ALL those things, but...WHAT!?!? COME ON!

And there are a bunch of things all wrong with this list.

"WOW", indeed.

I once had a conversation with David Price Sr. (of the Egyptian Hall Museum) about famous magicians he'd seen. He said that he'd seen everyone of note in the magic field during his lifetime and in his opinion the very best of all of them was Willard the Wizard.

The magicians list of the most famous is completely different than the layman's list. Not to mention it changes every few years. Here's our take... https://www.carnivalofillusion.com/most-famous-magicians.php

Also should probably be on the list. In no particular order:

Howard Thurston
Dante
Herrman
Keller
Fred Kaps
Slydini
Cardini
Ed Marlo
Bill Malone
Elmsley
Asconio

John Booth
Channing Pollock
Carl Ballantine
Juliana Chen
Paul Gertner
Shawn Farquhar
John Calvert
Jason Byrne
David Williamson
David Roth

Lennart Green
Zaney Blaney
Patrick Page
Robert Hardin
Karrell Fox
Milbourne Christopher
Henning Nelms

Roger Miller
Asi Wind
Michael Finney
David Zirbel
Rudy Colby
Murray Sawchuck
Cyrus
Rob Lake
Silvan
Ehrlich Brothers
Dani Lary
Amazing Jonathan

And many others that I have forgotten.

I'm not sure how scientific "ranker" is, I was only looking for
a few minutes but it shouldn't be hard to "game" so that
you get your name or whoevers name in the top 10.

Um...The Professor?