← Fame through time1500-1509
The 1500s
Whose working lives fell in the 1500s. 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 1500s, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Niccolò Machiavelli22 decades - 2
Nicolaus Copernicus8 decades - 3
Vasco da Gama22 decades - 4
Albrecht Dürer22 decades - 5
Erasmusnot measured- - 6
Guru Nanak13 decades - 7
Selim I11 decades - 8
Cesare Borgia22 decades - 9
Pope Paul IIInot measured- - 10
Moctezuma II1 decades - 11
Elizabeth of Yorknot measured- - 12
Thomas Wolsey21 decades - 13
Bartolomeu Dias3 decades - 14
Philip I of Castile3 decades - 15
Arthur, Prince of Wales5 decades - 16
James IV of Scotland7 decades - 17
Lucas Cranach the Elder6 decades - 18
Ludovico Ariosto22 decades - 19
Manuel I of Portugal0 decades - 20
Pedro Álvares Cabral0 decades - 21
Wang Yangming8 decades - 22
Krishnadevaraya7 decades - 23
Piri Reis4 decades - 24
Yeonsangun of Joseonnot measured- - 25
Frederick I of Denmark0 decades
How to read these rankings
- Attention, not reputation. A place on these lists reflects the attention a person still draws in the public record. 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.
- Gaps are left as gaps. Where the record is too thin to be fair, we would rather show nothing than guess.