← Fame through time1930-1939
The 1930s
Whose names filled the books of the 1930s - 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 1930s, whenever they lived.
- 1
Jesus25 - 2
Homer8.8 - 3
Plato7.5 - 4
Aristotle6.8 - 5
Augustus6.2 - 6
George Washington6.0 - 7
Cicero4.8 - 8
Johns Hopkins4.6 - 9
Virgil4.0 - 10
Socrates3.6 - 11
Abraham Lincoln2.5 - 12
Euclid2.3 - 13
Theodore Roosevelt1.9 - 14
Mark Twain1.9 - 15
Ovid1.8 - 16
Thomas Jefferson1.8 - 17
Benjamin Franklin1.8 - 18
Plutarch1.7 - 19
Cleopatra1.7 - 20
Woodrow Wilson1.6 - 21
William Henry1.6 - 22
Pocahontas1.5
- 23
J. P. Morgan1.5 - 24
Euripides1.4 - 25
Herodotus1.4 - 26
Charlemagne1.4 - 27
John Smith1.3 - 28
Rembrandt1.3 - 29
Adam Smith1.2 - 30
Walter Scott1.2 - 31
Andrew Jackson1.2 - 32
Henry Ford1.2 - 33
John Adams1.2 - 34
George V1.1 - 35
John Henry1.1 - 36
Livy1.1 - 37
Prince George, Duke of Cumberland1.1 - 38
Solon1.1 - 39
James I, Count of Urgell1.1 - 40
Bede1.0 - 41
Sophocles1.0 - 42
William Penn1.0 - 43
Alexander Hamilton0.99 - 44
Herbert Hoover0.97 - 45
Julius Caesar0.97 - 46
Pericles0.96 - 47
Galen0.96 - 48
Hadrian0.93 - 49
Henry James0.92 - 50
Aristophanes0.91 - 51
John Day0.89 - 52
Lucretius0.89 - 53
Horace Mann0.88 - 54
John Marshall0.87 - 55
Henry Clay0.86 - 56
Demosthenes0.83 - 57
John the Baptist0.82 - 58
John Hancock0.80 - 59
Jefferson Davis0.80 - 60
Edward VII0.79 - 61
John Dewey0.79
- 62
Osceola0.78 - 63
Xenophon0.77 - 64
John Wesley0.77 - 65
Thucydides0.76 - 66
James II, Count of Urgell0.75 - 67
George Peabody0.75 - 68
Trajan0.75 - 69
Pindar0.74 - 70
Hippocrates0.73 - 71
H. G. Wells0.72 - 72
Walt Whitman0.72 - 73
Black Hawk0.72 - 74
Aeschylus0.72 - 75
Matthew Arnold0.71 - 76
Ben Jonson0.69 - 77
Plautus0.69 - 78
Richard II0.69 - 79
Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor0.68 - 80Ababa0.68
- 81
Strabo0.68 - 82
Charles Dickens0.66 - 83
John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford0.66 - 84
Sam Houston0.66 - 85
Thomas Aquinas0.64 - 86
Alexander the Great0.64 - 87
Washington Irving0.63 - 88
Pythagoras0.63 - 89
Brigham Young0.62 - 90
Henry George0.61 - 91
Juniper0.60 - 92
George Eliot0.60 - 93
Catullus0.60 - 94
Ramsay MacDonald0.60 - 95
William Morris0.59 - 96
Sulla0.57 - 97
Samuel Johnson0.57 - 98
Mahatma Gandhi0.56 - 99
Lord Byron0.56 - 100
James Madison0.55
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 1930s, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Ernest Hemingway10 decades - 2
Alfred Hitchcock9 decades - 3
Walt Disney10 decades - 4
J. Robert Oppenheimer8 decades - 5
Ruhollah Khomeini5 decades - 6
George VI10 decades - 7
Joseph Goebbels9 decades - 8
George Orwell9 decades - 9
Heinrich Himmler9 decades - 10
Hirohito10 decades - 11
Deng Xiaoping11 decades - 12
Amelia Earhart10 decades - 13
Salvador Dalí10 decades - 14
Al Capone9 decades - 15
C. S. Lewis10 decades - 16
Cary Grant9 decades - 17
Marlene Dietrich9 decades - 18
Humphrey Bogart9 decades - 19
Georgy Zhukov6 decades - 20
Louis Armstrong9 decades - 21
Pope Paul VI6 decades - 22
Bing Crosby9 decades - 23
Clark Gable9 decades - 24
Werner Heisenberg10 decades - 25
John Steinbeck9 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.