← Fame through time1960-1969
The 1960s
Whose names filled the books of the 1960s - 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 1960s, whenever they lived.
- 1
Jesus24 - 2
Aristotle9.2 - 3
Plato8.5 - 4
Homer7.0 - 5
Johns Hopkins4.3 - 6
Augustus4.1 - 7
George Washington3.9 - 8
Cicero3.8 - 9
Socrates3.8 - 10
Virgil3.7 - 11
John F. Kennedy2.1 - 12
Mark Twain1.9 - 13
Euclid1.8 - 14
Abraham Lincoln1.7 - 15
Woodrow Wilson1.7 - 16
Thomas Jefferson1.6 - 17
Cleopatra1.6 - 18
Ovid1.6 - 19
Plutarch1.6 - 20
Sukarno1.5 - 21Ababa1.4
- 22
Theodore Roosevelt1.4 - 23
Euripides1.4 - 24
Henry James1.4 - 25
Rembrandt1.4 - 26
Herodotus1.4 - 27
Winston Churchill1.3 - 28
Benjamin Franklin1.3 - 29
Sophocles1.3 - 30
Charlemagne1.3 - 31
Adam Smith1.1 - 32
Mahatma Gandhi1.1 - 33
John Adams1.1 - 34
Livy1.0 - 35
William Henry1.0 - 36
Galen0.98 - 37
Aeschylus0.97 - 38
T. S. Eliot0.96 - 39
Pericles0.95 - 40
Lyndon B. Johnson0.94 - 41
Thucydides0.92 - 42
Prince George, Duke of Cumberland0.92 - 43
Hadrian0.91 - 44
Julius Caesar0.89 - 45
Aristophanes0.87 - 46
Bede0.86 - 47
U Thant0.85 - 48
Solon0.85 - 49
Jawaharlal Nehru0.85 - 50
John the Baptist0.84 - 51
Ramakrishna0.83 - 52
Brigham Young0.82 - 53
Ho Chi Minh0.81 - 54
Thomas Aquinas0.81 - 55
Origen0.80 - 56
John Smith0.80 - 57
Andrew Jackson0.80 - 58
Henry Ford0.78 - 59
George Eliot0.77 - 60
Pindar0.75 - 61
James I, Count of Urgell0.74 - 62
Lucretius0.74 - 63
Walter Scott0.73 - 64
Walt Whitman0.72 - 65
Alexander Hamilton0.71 - 66
John Henry0.71 - 67
Demosthenes0.70 - 68
Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor0.70 - 69
Pythagoras0.70 - 70
Alexander the Great0.70 - 71
Trajan0.69 - 72
John Dewey0.68
- 73Liu Shao0.68
- 74
Xenophon0.68 - 75
Ben Jonson0.68 - 76
Richard II0.68 - 77
Ahab0.67 - 78
John Day0.66 - 79
Strabo0.64 - 80
Thomas More0.64 - 81
James Madison0.64 - 82
Jane Austen0.63 - 83
Plotinus0.63 - 84
Archimedes0.62 - 85
William Penn0.62 - 86
Henry Clay0.61 - 87
Hippocrates0.61 - 88
John Marshall0.61 - 89
D. H. Lawrence0.60 - 90
Hesiod0.60 - 91
Pocahontas0.59
- 92
John Wesley0.59 - 93
James II, Count of Urgell0.59 - 94
Bertrand Russell0.58 - 95
Matthew Arnold0.58 - 96
Jefferson Davis0.58 - 97
Tertullian0.58 - 98
Plautus0.57 - 99
Herbert Hoover0.56 - 100
Sulla0.55
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 1960s, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Elizabeth II8 decades - 2
Marilyn Monroe7 decades - 3
Martin Luther King Jr.6 decades - 4
Pope Benedict XVI2 decades - 5
Che Guevara7 decades - 6
Brigitte Bardot7 decades - 7
Margaret Thatcher6 decades - 8
Clint Eastwood6 decades - 9
Mikhail Gorbachev4 decades - 10
Fidel Castro10 decades - 11
Audrey Hepburn7 decades - 12
Elizabeth Taylor9 decades - 13
Sean Connery6 decades - 14
Warren Buffett3 decades - 15
Stanley Kubrick6 decades - 16
Malcolm X6 decades - 17
Neil Armstrong6 decades - 18
Jane Goodall5 decades - 19
Noam Chomsky6 decades - 20
Yuri Gagarin6 decades - 21
Andy Warhol6 decades - 22
Johnny Cash6 decades - 23
Pol Pot5 decades - 24
Boris Yeltsin4 decades - 25
Sophia Loren7 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.