← Fame through time1900-1909
The 1900s
Whose names filled the books of the 1900s - anyone at all, however long dead - counted as mentions per million words printed, so a period that simply published more does not inflate anyone.
Talked about then
Whose names appeared most in English books during the 1900s, whenever they lived.
- 1
Jesus43 - 2
Augustus9.2 - 3
Homer8.8 - 4
Plato7.3 - 5
Cicero6.2 - 6
Aristotle5.9 - 7
Virgil4.3 - 8
Johns Hopkins4.1 - 9
Socrates3.5 - 10
George Washington2.4 - 11
Plutarch2.3 - 12
William Henry2.3 - 13
Abraham Lincoln2.3 - 14
Herodotus2.3 - 15
Charlemagne2.3 - 16
Cleopatra2.2 - 17
Euclid2.1 - 18
Walter Scott2.0 - 19
Ovid1.9 - 20
John Smith1.8 - 21
Demosthenes1.7 - 22
Rembrandt1.6 - 23
Euripides1.6 - 24
John the Baptist1.5 - 25
Pericles1.5 - 26
Pocahontas1.5
- 27
George Eliot1.4 - 28
Livy1.4 - 29
Xenophon1.4 - 30
Benjamin Franklin1.4 - 31
Bede1.4 - 32
Sophocles1.4 - 33
James II, Count of Urgell1.4 - 34
Edward VII1.3 - 35
John Adams1.3 - 36
Thomas Jefferson1.3 - 37
Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor1.3 - 38
Richard II1.3 - 39
Herbert Spencer1.3 - 40
Matthew Arnold1.2 - 41
Solon1.2 - 42
Julius Caesar1.2 - 43
John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford1.2 - 44
Andrew Carnegie1.2 - 45
Adam Smith1.2 - 46
John Henry1.2 - 47
Hadrian1.2 - 48
Thucydides1.1 - 49
Aristophanes1.1 - 50
Origen1.1 - 51
Hosea1.1 - 52
Ben Jonson1.1 - 53
Trajan1.1 - 54
Theodore Roosevelt1.1 - 55
Henry Clay1.00 - 56
William Penn1.00 - 57
Osceola0.99 - 58
Lord Byron0.99 - 59
Pindar0.96 - 60
Lucretius0.92 - 61
Tertullian0.91 - 62
Mark Twain0.91 - 63
Galen0.91 - 64
Strabo0.90 - 65
John Wesley0.89 - 66
Black Hawk0.88 - 67
Plautus0.88 - 68
Leland Stanford0.88 - 69
Sulla0.87 - 70
Joseph Smith0.85 - 71
Charles Lamb0.84 - 72
Robert Peel0.84 - 73
Otho0.84 - 74
Andrew Jackson0.84 - 75
Charles Dickens0.83 - 76
Alexander the Great0.83 - 77
Richard III0.80 - 78
Jefferson Davis0.79 - 79
John Marshall0.78 - 80
Oliver Cromwell0.77 - 81
Prince George, Duke of Cumberland0.76 - 82
Henry George0.76 - 83
Hippocrates0.75 - 84
Pythagoras0.75 - 85
Marcus Aurelius0.74 - 86
William Morris0.74 - 87
Diocletian0.72 - 88
Edward Everett0.72 - 89
Alexander Hamilton0.71 - 90
Horace Walpole0.71 - 91
William McKinley0.70 - 92
James I, Count of Urgell0.70 - 93
John Bull0.69 - 94
John Quincy Adams0.68 - 95
Henry James0.68 - 96
James Wilson0.68 - 97
Saladin0.68 - 98
Roger Williams0.66 - 99
Vespasian0.66 - 100
Catiline0.66
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 1900s, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Winston Churchill13 decades - 2
Vladimir Lenin12 decades - 3
Mahatma Gandhi10 decades - 4
Marie Curie4 decades - 5
George V16 decades - 6
Grigori Rasputin11 decades - 7
Herbert Hoover11 decades - 8
Nicholas II of Russia14 decades - 9
Sun Yat-sen12 decades - 10
Calvin Coolidge11 decades - 11
Warren G. Harding11 decades - 12
Rudyard Kipling13 decades - 13
Frank Lloyd Wright12 decades - 14
Rosa Luxemburg13 decades - 15
Neville Chamberlain16 decades - 16
H. G. Wells16 decades - 17
Bertrand Russell13 decades - 18
Harry Houdini7 decades - 19
Marcel Proust12 decades - 20
Henri Matisse12 decades - 21
Sergei Rachmaninoffnot measured- - 22
Robert Frost13 decades - 23
W. B. Yeats12 decades - 24
G. K. Chesterton12 decades - 25
Beatrix Potter10 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.