← Fame through time1921
1921
Whose working lives fell in 1921. 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 1921, ranked where Wikipedia coverage and readership agree.
- 1
David Ben-Gurionnot measured- - 2
Diego Rivera14 decades - 3
Alfonso XIII of Spain7 decades - 4
Marc Bloch12 decades - 5
Ernst Thälmann9 decades - 6
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe7 decades - 7
George Mallorynot measured- - 8
Sergey Kirov9 decades - 9
René Guénon10 decades - 10
Robert Schuman10 decades - 11
Jun'ichirō Tanizakinot measured- - 12
Zhu De11 decades - 13
Ty Cobbnot measured- - 14
Karl Barth14 decades - 15
Al Jolsonnot measured- - 16
Oskar Kokoschka11 decades - 17
Nikolay Gumilevnot measured- - 18
Wilhelm Furtwänglernot measured-
- 19
Siegfried Sassoonnot measured- - 20
Béla Kun10 decades - 21
Sergo Ordzhonikidze10 decades - 22
Edward Rydz-Śmigłynot measured- - 23
Michael Curtiz5 decades - 24
Gotthard Heinricinot measured- - 25
Victor McLaglennot measured-
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.