← Fame through time1780-1789
The 1780s
Whose working lives fell in the 1780s. 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 1780s, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe14 decades - 2
James Madison22 decades - 3
Francisco Goya18 decades - 4
Paul I of Russia21 decades - 5
Louis XVI of France22 decades - 6
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgordnot measured- - 7
Olympe de Gouges22 decades - 8
Jeremy Bentham22 decades - 9
Jacques-Louis David7 decades - 10
Antonio Salieri15 decades - 11
Mikhail Kutuzov8 decades - 12
Alessandro Volta22 decades - 13
Pierre-Simon Laplace2 decades - 14
Edward Jenner22 decades - 15
Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperornot measured- - 16
Tipu Sultan15 decades - 17
Charles IV of Spain17 decades - 18
Miguel Hidalgo Y Costilla21 decades - 19
Tadeusz Kościuszko0 decades - 20
Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeaunot measured- - 21
John Jay22 decades - 22
Francisco de Miranda22 decades - 23
Adam Weishaupt18 decades - 24
Joseph de Maistre21 decades - 25
Phillis Wheatley16 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.