← 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
William Herschel22 decades - 2
Caroline Herschel10 decades
- 3
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg17 decades - 4
Ernst Chladni5 decades - 5
Johann Friedrich Gmelin3 decades - 6
Johann Heinrich Schulze7 decades - 7Maria Margaretha Kirch0 decades
- 8
Johann Gottlob Leidenfrost0 decades - 9
Maria Clara Eimmart0 decades - 10
Jacob Christian Schäffer0 decades - 11
Johann Besslernot measured- - 12
Johann Andreas Segner0 decades - 13
Lorenz Heister10 decades - 14
Johann Gottfried Zinn0 decades - 15Johann Gerhard König0 decades
- 16
Christian August Hausennot measured- - 17
Christian Mayer17 decades - 18
Johann Hedwig2 decades - 19
Philipp Friedrich Gmelin0 decades - 20
Friedrich Kasimir Medikus2 decades - 21
Georg Matthias Bosenot measured- - 22
Otto von Münchhausen2 decades - 23
Ignaz Kögler0 decades - 24
Johann Gottlieb Gleditsch0 decades - 25
Johan Gabriel Doppelmayr2 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.