← 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
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz15 decades - 5
Baruch Spinoza16 decades - 6
Blaise Pascal22 decades - 7
Johannes Kepler18 decades - 8
Thomas Hobbes22 decades - 9
Miyamoto Musashi2 decades - 10
Robert Hooke22 decades - 11
Christiaan Huygens7 decades - 12
Robert Boyle22 decades - 13
Pierre de Fermat8 decades - 14
Hugo Grotius22 decades - 15
Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon22 decades - 16
Johan de Witt0 decades - 17
Jacob Bernoulli22 decades - 18
Jakob Böhme22 decades - 19
Athanasius Kircher21 decades - 20
Tommaso Campanella22 decades - 21
George Fox22 decades - 22
Roger Williams22 decades - 23
Anne Hutchinson20 decades - 24
Giovanni Domenico Cassininot measured- - 25
Guillaume de l'Hôpitalnot measured- - 26
Paul Gerhardt20 decades - 27
Marin Mersenne17 decades - 28
Pierre Gassendi21 decades - 29
Pierre Bayle22 decades - 30
Nicolas Malebranche11 decades - 31
John Harvard22 decades - 32
Elena Cornaro Piscopia0 decades - 33
William Laud22 decades - 34
Isaac Barrow22 decades - 35
John Wallis22 decades - 36
Jakob Ammann0 decades
- 37
Antoine Galland16 decades - 38
Mulla Sadra4 decades - 39
Matthew Hopkins10 decades - 40
Simon Marius15 decades - 41
William Petty22 decades - 42
Samuel von Pufendorf9 decades - 43
Robert Fludd16 decades - 44
Elisabeth of the Palatinatenot measured- - 45
Robert Burton22 decades - 46
Yamamoto Tsunetomo0 decades - 47
François Bernier19 decades - 48
Alexandre de Rhodes0 decades - 49
John Wilkins22 decades - 50
Bonaventura Cavalieri22 decades - 51
Christian Thomasius1 decades - 52
Uriel da Costa0 decades - 53
Charles I, Landgrave of Hesse-Kasselnot measured-
- 54
Giulio Cesare Vanini17 decades - 55
Ole Worm0 decades - 56
Robert Filmer21 decades - 57
August Hermann Francke20 decades - 58
William Oughtred1 decades - 59
Anne Conway3 decades - 60
Takakazu Seki0 decades - 61
Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus3 decades - 62
Menasseh Ben Israel22 decades - 63
Adam Olearius22 decades - 64
Henry More22 decades - 65
Kâtip Çelebi0 decades - 66
Gilles de Roberval0 decades - 67
Vincenzo Viviani22 decades - 68
Peter Mogila0 decades - 69
Wilhelm Schickardnot measured- - 70
Michel Rolle0 decades - 71
Girard Desargues4 decades - 72
Giovanni Alfonso Borelli0 decades - 73
Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherburynot measured- - 74
Huang Zongxi7 decades - 75Thomas Mun5 decades
- 76
Nicholas Barbon1 decades - 77
Henry Oldenburg8 decades - 78
Kazimierz Łyszczyńskinot measured- - 79
Thomas Bartholin2 decades - 80
Arai Hakuseki0 decades - 81
Raghavendra Teertha0 decades - 82
Ralph Cudworth19 decades - 83
Caspar Bartholin the Younger0 decades - 84
Benedetto Castelli22 decades - 85
Stefan Yavorsky21 decades - 86Edmund Gunter2 decades
- 87
Kenelm Digby22 decades - 88
Péter Pázmány0 decades - 89Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsinot measured-
- 90
Pierre Varignon2 decades - 91
John Pell17 decades - 92
Árni Magnússon0 decades - 93
François de La Mothe Le Vayernot measured- - 94
Jan Jesenius0 decades - 95
Arnold Geulincx0 decades - 96
Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz19 decades - 97Yaqob Zeranot measured-
- 98
Jean Hardouin11 decades - 99
Antoine de Montchrestien9 decades - 100
William Brouncker, 2nd Viscount Brounckernot 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.