← Fame through time1851
1851
Whose working lives fell in 1851. 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 1851, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Charlotte Brontë17 decades - 2
Werner von Siemens13 decades - 3
Arthur de Gobineau12 decades - 4
Carl Zeiss13 decades - 5
Ferdinand II of Portugalnot measured- - 6
Paul Reuter0 decades - 7
Gustav Freytag18 decades - 8
Eugène Pottier12 decades - 9
Priscilla Cooper Tyler0 decades - 10
Jubal Early12 decades - 11
Emanuel Leutze0 decades - 12
Paul Féval18 decades - 13
George Henry Thomas0 decades - 14
Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria-Teschennot measured- - 15
Elihu B. Washburne10 decades - 16
Dmitry Milyutin6 decades - 17
Nathaniel P. Banks17 decades - 18
Antoine Béchampnot measured- - 19
Sir William Gull, 1st Baronetnot measured- - 20
Malwida Freiin von Meysenbug12 decades - 21
Morrison Waitenot measured- - 22
Charles Denis Bourbakinot measured- - 23
Stephen Allen Benson0 decades - 24
Franz Sachernot measured- - 25
John Frederick Kensett0 decades
How to read these rankings
- People sit in their own time. Everyone is placed in the century their working life belongs to, and never in one that came after their death.
- Attention, not reputation. A place on these lists reflects the attention a person still draws in the public record, read across every language rather than one. 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. Those decades are closed, so each curve is measured once and kept.
- Gaps are left as gaps. Where the record is too thin to be fair, or a name belongs to more than one notable person, we would rather show nothing than guess.