← 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
John Locke22 decades - 3
Thomas Hobbes22 decades - 4
Robert Hooke22 decades - 5
George Fox22 decades - 6
Roger Williams22 decades - 7
Anne Hutchinson20 decades - 8
John Harvard22 decades - 9
William Laud22 decades - 10
Matthew Hopkins10 decades - 11
William Petty22 decades - 12
Robert Fludd16 decades - 13
Robert Burton22 decades - 14
Nicholas Barbon1 decades - 15Edmund Gunter2 decades
- 16
John Pell17 decades - 17George Dalgarno0 decades
- 18Lewis Baylynot measured-
- 19Charles Blountnot measured-
- 20
Daniel Whitbynot measured- - 21
John Goodwinnot measured- - 22Henry Ainsworthnot measured-
- 23Edward Misseldennot measured-
- 24
John Prideauxnot measured- - 25
John Babingtonnot 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.