← Fame through time1480-1489
The 1480s
Whose working lives fell in the 1480s. 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 1480s, ranked where Wikipedia coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Christopher Columbus21 decades - 2
Leonardo da Vinci22 decades - 3
Isabella I of Castile19 decades - 4
Richard III of England0 decades - 5
Ferdinand II of Aragon14 decades - 6
Amerigo Vespucci22 decades - 7
Hieronymus Bosch9 decades - 8
Sandro Botticelli22 decades - 9
Lorenzo de' Medici22 decades - 10
Girolamo Savonarola22 decades - 11
Mary of Burgundy22 decades - 12
Pietro Perugino22 decades - 13
John Cabot16 decades - 14
Bayezid II3 decades - 15
Domenico Ghirlandaio22 decades - 16
Pinturicchio22 decades - 17
Aldus Manutius22 decades - 18
Anne Neville6 decades - 19
Luca Signorelli22 decades - 20
Agnolo Poliziano22 decades - 21
Afonso de Albuquerque4 decades - 22
Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba15 decades - 23
James III of Scotland0 decades - 24
Diogo Cão0 decades - 25
Alfonso II of Naples3 decades
How this is measured
- Placing people in time. Each person belongs to the century in which they were most active, around age 35, and never after their death.
- Who ranks highest. Within a century, people are ranked where two independent signals agree: how many of the world's Wikipedia language editions cover them, and how many people actually read about them. Article counts alone can be lifted by a person's own circle; readers cannot.
- Fame in print. The curves count how often a name appears in Google Books from 1800 to 2019, as a share of all the words printed each year, in the person's own language wherever that corpus exists. Those decades are over, so each measurement is made once and kept.
- What is left out. A lifetime is measured only from 1820, when there is enough print to judge; the five years after a death are skipped as obituaries; and a name shared with someone equally notable is credited to neither.