← 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
Immanuel Kant22 decades - 2
Jean-Jacques Rousseau22 decades - 3
Leonhard Euler22 decades - 4
Adam Smith22 decades - 5
Marquis de Sade12 decades - 6
Thomas Paine22 decades - 7
David Hume22 decades - 8
Montesquieu22 decades - 9
Jeremy Bentham22 decades - 10
Denis Diderot21 decades - 11
John Wesley22 decades - 12
Pierre-Simon Laplace2 decades - 13
George Berkeley8 decades - 14
Joseph-Louis Lagrange0 decades - 15
Johann Gottfried Herder18 decades - 16
Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhabnot measured- - 17
Johann Gottlieb Fichte22 decades - 18
Marquis de Condorcet1 decades - 19
Daniel Bernoulli22 decades - 20
Adam Weishaupt18 decades - 21
Henry Cavendish22 decades - 22
Joseph de Maistre21 decades - 23
Henri de Saint-Simonnot measured- - 24
Giambattista Vico22 decades - 25
Cesare Beccaria22 decades - 26
Jean le Rond d'Alembert7 decades - 27
Moses Mendelssohn22 decades - 28
Lazare Carnot14 decades - 29
Johann Bernoulli22 decades - 30
Thomas Bayes2 decades - 31
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot2 decades - 32
George Whitefield22 decades - 33
Adrien-Marie Legendre0 decades - 34
Hryhorii Skovoroda12 decades - 35
William Jones22 decades - 36
Gaspard Monge22 decades - 37
Abraham de Moivre0 decades - 38
Brook Taylor9 decades - 39
Maria Gaetana Agnesi22 decades - 40
Shah Waliullah Dehlawi0 decades - 41
Anton Wilhelm Amo0 decades - 42
Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuisnot measured- - 43
François Quesnay14 decades - 44
Johann Heinrich Lambert2 decades - 45
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi22 decades - 46
Claude Adrien Helvétius0 decades - 47
Dimitrie Cantemir6 decades - 48
Isaac Watts22 decades - 49
Johann Georg Hamann21 decades - 50
Christian Wolff22 decades - 51
Colin MacLaurin0 decades - 52
Étienne Bonnot de Condillac1 decades - 53
Feofan Prokopovichnot measured- - 54
Christian Goldbach0 decades - 55
Louis de Bonald7 decades - 56
Thomas Reid22 decades - 57
Richard Cantillon4 decades - 58
Giuseppe Piazzi22 decades - 59Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten11 decades
- 60
Francis Hutcheson17 decades - 61John Michell19 decades
- 62
William Paley20 decades - 63
Rigas Velestinlis19 decades - 64
Antiochus Kantemir17 decades - 65
Charles Marie de La Condamine0 decades - 66
Adam Ferguson22 decades - 67
Shneur Zalman of Liadi18 decades - 68
Hakuin Ekakunot measured- - 69
Pierre André Latreille1 decades - 70
Constantin-François Chassebœufnot measured- - 71
John Toland21 decades - 72
José Celestino Mutis y Bosionot measured- - 73
Nevil Maskelyne9 decades - 74
Moshe Chaim Luzzattonot measured- - 75
Alexis Clairaut0 decades - 76
Gabriel Cramer21 decades - 77
Antoine Destutt de Tracy0 decades - 78
Roger Cotes6 decades - 79
Francesco Algarotti22 decades - 80
Carsten Niebuhr3 decades - 81
Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemoursnot measured- - 82
Étienne Bézout1 decades - 83
Charles Bonnet22 decades - 84
William Whiston20 decades - 85
Motoori Norinaga6 decades - 86
John Law22 decades - 87
Pierre Jean George Cabanis0 decades - 88
George Wythe22 decades - 89William Playfair3 decades
- 90
William Stukeley9 decades - 91
Joseph Butler22 decades - 92
Abraham Gottlob Werner17 decades - 93
Ahmed al-Tijani0 decades - 94
Jean-Charles de Borda3 decades - 95
Louis-Claude de Saint-Martinnot measured- - 96
Pietro Verri22 decades - 97
Ji Yunnot measured- - 98
Friedrich August Wolf22 decades - 99
Gabriel Bonnot de Mably3 decades - 100
Jacques Cazotte15 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.