← 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
Galileo Galilei22 decades - 2
Tycho Brahe22 decades
- 3
Philip Melanchthon22 decades - 4
Piri Reis4 decades - 5
Martin Waldseemüller10 decades - 6
Johann Georg Faust0 decades - 7
Abraham Ortelius4 decades - 8
Thomas Harriot7 decades - 9
Christopher Clavius1 decades - 10
Peter Henlein13 decades - 11
Bernard Palissy22 decades - 12
Ulisse Aldrovandi1 decades - 13
Li Shizhen7 decades - 14
Jodocus Hondius Inot measured- - 15
Sophia Brahe0 decades - 16
Carolus Clusius0 decades - 17
Petrus Plancius0 decades - 18
Sanctorius17 decades - 19
William IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel22 decades - 20
Pietro Andrea Mattioli21 decades - 21
Gaspard Bauhin21 decades - 22
Thomas Digges14 decades - 23
Hieronymus Bock18 decades - 24
John Gerard22 decades - 25
Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberlandnot 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.