← 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
Carl Linnaeus7 decades - 2
Mikhail Lomonosov19 decades - 3
Antoine Lavoisier2 decades - 4
James Watt22 decades - 5
Alessandro Volta22 decades - 6
William Herschel22 decades - 7
Emanuel Swedenborg0 decades
- 8
Tadeusz Kościuszko0 decades - 9
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit1 decades - 10
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck2 decades - 11
Joseph Priestley22 decades - 12
Anders Celsius0 decades - 13
Abram Petrovich Gannibal7 decades - 14
John Harrison22 decades - 15
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb0 decades - 16
Caroline Herschel10 decades
- 17
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg17 decades - 18
Joseph Banks22 decades - 19
William Carey22 decades - 20
Carl Wilhelm Scheele8 decades - 21
Nicolas Appert6 decades - 22
James Hutton22 decades - 23
Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot0 decades - 24
Thomas Telford22 decades - 25
Charles Messier1 decades - 26
Benjamin Banneker7 decades
- 27
Yeongjo of Joseonnot measured- - 28
Antoine-Augustin Parmentier0 decades - 29
Laura Bassi22 decades - 30
Hans Egede17 decades - 31
Peter Simon Pallas9 decades - 32
Jean Sylvain Bailly0 decades - 33
Roger Joseph Boscovich7 decades - 34
Benjamin Thompson22 decades - 35
Ernst Chladni5 decades - 36
Lazzaro Spallanzani22 decades - 37
Jethro Tull22 decades - 38
Johann Balthasar Neumann13 decades - 39
Joseph Marie Jacquard0 decades
- 40
Mary-Anne Paulzzze Lavoisiernot measured- - 41
Martin Heinrich Klaproth7 decades - 42
Jean-François Pilatre de Roziernot measured- - 43
Joseph Black22 decades - 44
Matthew Boulton22 decades - 45
Jacques Charles13 decades - 46
Claude Chappe17 decades - 47
John Smeaton21 decades - 48
René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumurnot measured- - 49
Jérôme Lalande4 decades - 50
Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbesnot measured- - 51
John Loudon McAdam0 decades - 52
Abraham-Louis Breguet0 decades - 53
Jacques de Vaucanson0 decades - 54
William Murdoch13 decades - 55
Herman Boerhaave4 decades - 56
James Hargreaves17 decades - 57
Horace Bénédict de Saussure2 decades - 58
Johann Friedrich Gmelin3 decades - 59
Pierre-Joseph Redouté2 decades - 60
Johann Elert Bode4 decades - 61
Samuel Crompton15 decades - 62
James Bradley22 decades - 63
Johann Friedrich Böttger10 decades - 64
Carl Peter Thunberg0 decades - 65
Antoine Laurent de Jussieu20 decades - 66
Johan Fabricius0 decades - 67
Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille0 decades - 68
Jean-Antoine Chaptal4 decades - 69Guillaume Le Gentil0 decades
- 70
John Playfair14 decades - 71
Georg Wilhelm Richmann0 decades - 72
Stepan Krasheninnikov8 decades - 73
Edmund Cartwright9 decades - 74
Jean-Pierre Blanchard0 decades - 75
Gilbert White22 decades - 76
Pierre Méchain0 decades - 77
Johan Gadolinnot measured- - 78
William Bartram22 decades - 79
Abbé Faria0 decades - 80
Pierre Bouguer4 decades - 81
David Rittenhouse22 decades - 82
Joseph Proust0 decades - 83
Giovanni Battista Venturi2 decades - 84
Daniel Rutherford4 decades - 85
Michel Adanson9 decades - 86
John Theophilus Desaguliers0 decades - 87
Jan Ingenhousz0 decades - 88
Nicole-Reine Lepaute0 decades - 89Philip Miller22 decades
- 90
Jean-Baptiste Joseph Delambre0 decades - 91
Louis Nicolas Vauquelin0 decades - 92
Mathurin Jacques Brisson0 decades - 93
Giovanni Aldini21 decades - 94
Stephen Hales22 decades - 95
Jacob Bruce14 decades - 96
Andrés Manuel del Ríonot measured- - 97Stephen Gray11 decades
- 98
Henry Shrapnel0 decades - 99
Carl Linnaeus the Younger0 decades - 100
John Bartram22 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.