Baidu CEO ranks among scientists that have changed the world   

Robin Li, founder and CEO of Baidu, speaks at a forum on Jan 18, 2015. (Photo: CRIonline)

(ECNS) -- Robin Li, founder and CEO of Baidu, the biggest Chinese search engine globally, has been listed as one of the "scientific geeks that have changed the world" in Walter Isaacson's newly published The Innovators.

The book, released two months ago, gives a brief history of innovation in computer science and includes stories about Alan Turing, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

It also describes the story of how Li, the only Chinese innovator to feature, invented the patent for hyperlink analysis.

Isaacson believes Li is the first to have put forward the theory of prioritizing search results based on quantity and evaluation.

He also credits the scientist, who created Baidu based on hyperlink analysis, with developing the basic technologies used by search engines.

At the age of 28, Li applied for a United States technical patent related to hyperlink analysis, which is still the standard for Internet searches and adopted by companies such as Google.

Li applied the theory of hyperlink analysis to a small-scale search engine called RankDex in 1996, two years before Google first used it, according to an article published by Reddit, a famous US social news website.

He has always believed in changing the Internet and people's lives using technology and has been an inspiration to many "scientific geeks".