← Fame through time1600-1699
The 17th century
Whose working lives fell in the 17th 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 17th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Isaac Newton22 decades - 2
René Descartes22 decades - 3
John Locke22 decades - 4
Louis XIV of France22 decades - 5
Oliver Cromwell22 decades - 6
Molière22 decades - 7
Charles I of England12 decades - 8
Rembrandt22 decades - 9
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz15 decades - 10
Baruch Spinoza16 decades - 11
Blaise Pascal22 decades - 12
James VI and I5 decades - 13
Caravaggio22 decades - 14
Charles II of England12 decades - 15
Aurangzeb20 decades - 16
Shah Jahan16 decades - 17
Johannes Kepler18 decades - 18
Cardinal Richelieunot measured- - 19
Thomas Hobbes22 decades - 20
Johannes Vermeer3 decades - 21
John Milton22 decades - 22
James II of England3 decades - 23
Peter Paul Rubens22 decades - 24
William III of England2 decades - 25
Diego Velázquez20 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.