← Fame through time1901
1901
Whose working lives fell in 1901. 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 1901, ranked where Wikipedia coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Sun Yat-sen12 decades - 2
H. G. Wells16 decades - 3
Beatrix Potter10 decades - 4
Wassily Kandinsky4 decades - 5
Erik Satie11 decades - 6
Romain Rolland13 decades - 7
Ramsay MacDonald12 decades - 8
Benedetto Croce14 decades - 9
George Gurdjieff0 decades - 10
Anne Sullivannot measured- - 11
Leon Czolgosznot measured- - 12
Butch Cassidynot measured- - 13
Hans von Seecktnot measured- - 14
George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvonnot measured- - 15
Mykhailo Hrushevskyi3 decades - 16
Giovanni Agnellinot measured- - 17
Gaetano Brescinot measured- - 18
Ramón María del Valle-Inclánnot measured- - 19
Emilio De Bononot measured- - 20
Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich of Russianot measured- - 21
Gopal Krishna Gokhalenot measured- - 22
Lev Shestovnot measured- - 23
Ferruccio Busoni12 decades - 24
Thomas Hunt Morgan9 decades - 25
Jacinto Benavente13 decades
How to read these rankings
- People sit in their own time. Everyone is placed in the century their working life belongs to, and never in one that came after their death.
- Attention, not reputation. A place on these lists reflects the attention a person still draws in the public record, read across every language rather than one. 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. Those decades are closed, so each curve is measured once and kept.
- Gaps are left as gaps. Where the record is too thin to be fair, or a name belongs to more than one notable person, we would rather show nothing than guess.