← Fame through time1950-1959
The 1950s
Whose names filled the books of the 1950s - 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 Hebrew books during the 1950s, whenever they lived.
- 1
Sabbatai Zevi14 - 2
Haggai12 - 3
Ahad Ha'am9.9 - 4
Rav Ashi9.7 - 5Saadia Gaon9.4
- 6
Paul the Apostle8.0 - 7
Habakkuk7.0 - 8
Josephus6.2 - 9
Johanan ben Zakai5.8 - 10Simeon ben Gamliel II4.7
- 11
Judas Maccabeus4.2 - 12
Menachem Begin4.2 - 13Nathan the Babylonian4.1
- 14
Hai Gaon4.0 - 15Samuel ibn Naghrillah3.5
- 16
Rabbeinu Tam2.9 - 17Judah ben Samuel of Regensburg2.8
- 18
Hillel the Elder2.7 - 19
Nathan of Gaza2.4 - 20
Hayyim ben Joseph Vital2.3 - 21
Moshe Sharett2.2 - 22Simeon ben Zoma1.7
- 23
Mendele Mocher Sforim1.7 - 24
Chaim Joseph David Azulai1.7 - 25
Jacob Emden1.6
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 1950s, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
John F. Kennedy11 decades - 2
Jimmy Carter7 decades - 3
Pope John Paul II5 decades - 4
George H. W. Bush2 decades - 5
Nelson Mandela6 decades - 6
Judy Garland9 decades - 7
Marlon Brando7 decades - 8
Frank Sinatra8 decades - 9
Indira Gandhi7 decades - 10
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh0 decades - 11
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi4 decades - 12
Henry Kissinger7 decades - 13
Christopher Lee6 decades - 14
Roald Dahl6 decades - 15
Isaac Asimov7 decades - 16
Ingrid Bergman8 decades - 17
James Dean9 decades - 18
Richard Feynman4 decades - 19
Nicolae Ceaușescunot measured- - 20
Orson Welles9 decades - 21
Lee Kuan Yew7 decades - 22
Kirk Douglas8 decades - 23
Eva Perón8 decades - 24
Édith Piaf6 decades - 25
Charles Bronson5 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.