← Fame through time1400-1499
The 15th century
Whose working lives fell in the 15th century. 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 15th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Christopher Columbus21 decades - 2
Amerigo Vespucci22 decades - 3
Richard III of England0 decades - 4
Zheng He8 decades - 5
Henry VII of England7 decades - 6
Henry VI of England0 decades - 7
Skanderbeg7 decades - 8
Richard II of England0 decades - 9
Henry IV of England0 decades - 10
Charles VI of France4 decades - 11
Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperornot measured- - 12
Charles VII of France0 decades - 13
Murad II11 decades - 14
Louis XII of France22 decades - 15
Bayezid II3 decades - 16
Mehmed the Conqueror2 decades - 17
Sejong the Great0 decades - 18
Edward IV of England0 decades - 19
Matthias Corvinus22 decades - 20
Juan Ponce de León20 decades - 21
John Cabot16 decades - 22
Mehmed I0 decades - 23
Prince Henry the Navigator15 decades - 24
James I of Scotland3 decades - 25
Margaret of Anjounot measured-
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.