← Fame through time1700-1799
The 18th century
Whose working lives fell in the 18th 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 18th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Antoine Lavoisier2 decades - 2
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck2 decades - 3
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb0 decades - 4
Nicolas Appert6 decades - 5
Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot0 decades - 6
Charles Messier1 decades - 7
Antoine-Augustin Parmentier0 decades - 8
Jean Sylvain Bailly0 decades - 9
Joseph Marie Jacquard0 decades
- 10
Mary-Anne Paulzzze Lavoisiernot measured- - 11
Jean-François Pilatre de Roziernot measured- - 12
Joseph Black22 decades - 13
Jacques Charles13 decades - 14
Claude Chappe17 decades - 15
Jérôme Lalande4 decades - 16
Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbesnot measured- - 17
Abraham-Louis Breguet0 decades - 18
Horace Bénédict de Saussure2 decades - 19
Pierre-Joseph Redouté2 decades - 20
Antoine Laurent de Jussieu20 decades - 21
Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille0 decades - 22
Jean-Antoine Chaptal4 decades - 23Guillaume Le Gentil0 decades
- 24
Jean-Pierre Blanchard0 decades - 25
Pierre Méchain0 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.