← Fame through time1000-1009
The 1000s
Whose working lives fell in the 1000s. Books are measured from 1800 and readers from 2015, so for this period we can say who lived then, not who was talked about then.
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 1000s, ranked where Wikipedia coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Leif Erikson11 decades - 2
Ibn al-Haytham5 decades - 3
Al-Biruni8 decades - 4
Æthelred the Unready0 decades - 5
Mahmud of Ghazni15 decades - 6
Murasaki Shikibu6 decades - 7
Henry II, Holy Roman Emperornot measured- - 8
Robert II of France0 decades - 9
Otto III, Holy Roman Emperornot measured- - 10
Bolesław I the Brave0 decades - 11
al-Ma'arri0 decades - 12
Sei Shōnagon0 decades - 13
Romanos III Argyros0 decades - 14
Pope Sergius IV0 decades - 15
Sigrid the Haughty0 decades - 16
Constance of Arles0 decades - 17
Emperor Zhenzong of Songnot measured- - 18
John XVI7 decades - 19
Hisham II0 decades - 20Ælfgifu of Northampton0 decades
- 21
Kenneth III of Scotland0 decades - 22
Bjarni Herjólfsson0 decades - 23
Fulk III, Count of Anjou0 decades - 24
Emperor Kazan0 decades - 25
Fujiwara no Michinaga0 decades
How to read these rankings
- People sit in their own time. Everyone is placed in the century their working life belongs to, and never in one that came after their death.
- Attention, not reputation. A place on these lists reflects the attention a person still draws in the public record, read across every language rather than one. It is not a judgement on the life.
- Fame in print. The curves show how often a name appeared in the books of each decade from 1800 to 2019, drawn from the Google Books Ngram corpus. Those decades are closed, so each curve is measured once and kept.
- Gaps are left as gaps. Where the record is too thin to be fair, or a name belongs to more than one notable person, we would rather show nothing than guess.