← Fame through time1500-1599
The 16th century
Whose working lives fell in the 16th 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 16th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Nostradamus22 decades - 2
Henry IV of France10 decades - 3
Catherine de' Medici22 decades - 4
Francis I of France0 decades - 5
John Calvin22 decades - 6
Michel de Montaigne22 decades - 7
Jacques Cartier22 decades - 8
Henry II of Francenot measured- - 9
François Rabelais22 decades - 10
Charles IX of France0 decades - 11
Francis II of France22 decades - 12
Henry III of France4 decades - 13
Margaret of Valois22 decades - 14
Mary Tudor, Queen of France22 decades - 15
Anne of Brittany22 decades - 16
Étienne de La Boétie3 decades - 17
Pierre de Ronsard21 decades - 18
Diane de Poitiers22 decades - 19
Mary of Lorraine15 decades - 20
Marguerite de Navarre0 decades - 21
Benvenuto Cellini22 decades - 22
Elisabeth of Valois22 decades - 23
Claude of France22 decades - 24
Jeanne d'Albret22 decades - 25
Ambroise Paré22 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.