215,950 profiles ranked

← Fame through time1800-1899

The 19th century

Whose names filled the books of the 19th century - 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 Chinese books during the 19th century, whenever they lived.

  1. 1Zhu Xi1130-1200 · 12th century · China · Writers870
  2. 2Li Hongzhang1823-1901 · 19th century · China · Politicians149
  3. 3Zhang Zhidong1837-1909 · 19th century · Politicians86
  4. 4Zuo Zongtang1812-1885 · 19th century · China · Politicians43
  5. 5Ban Gu32-92 · 1st century · Writers40
  6. 6Ge Hong284-364 · 4th century · Academics40
  7. 7Chen Shou233-297 · 3rd century · Writers14
  8. 8Mao Zedong1893-1976 · 20th century · China · Politicians12
  9. 9Lu Xun1881-1936 · 20th century · China · Writers11

Lived then

The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 19th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.

  1. 1Karl Marx1818-1883 · Germany · Academics17 decades
  2. 2Friedrich Nietzsche1844-1900 · Germany · Academics15 decades
  3. 3Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel1770-1831 · Germany · Academics21 decades
  4. 4Carl Friedrich Gauss1777-1855 · Germany · Academics11 decades
  5. 5Max Weber1864-1920 · Germany · Academics15 decades
  6. 6David Hilbert1862-1943 · Germany · Academics14 decades
  7. 7Georg Cantor1845-1918 · Germany · Academics14 decades
  8. 8Bernhard Riemann1826-1866 · Germany · Academics12 decades
  9. 9Heinrich Schliemann1822-1890 · Germany · Academics15 decades
  10. 10Ludwig Feuerbach1804-1872 · Germany · Academics19 decades
  11. 11Jacob Grimm1785-1863 · Germany · Academics21 decades
  12. 12Wilhelm von Humboldt1767-1835 · Germany · Academics22 decades
  13. 13Wilhelm Wundt1832-1920 · Germany · Academics15 decades
  14. 14Gottlob Frege1848-1925 · Germany · Academics9 decades
  15. 15Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling1775-1854 · Germany · Academics9 decades
  16. 16Theodor Mommsen1817-1903 · Germany · Academics18 decades
  17. 17Max Müller1823-1900 · Germany · Academics5 decades
  18. 18Karl Weierstrass1815-1897 · Germany · Academics8 decades
  19. 19Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi1804-1851 · Germany · Academics1 decades
  20. 20Houston Stewart Chamberlain1855-1927 · Germany · Academics13 decades
  21. 21August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben1798-1874 · Germany · Academics6 decades
  22. 22Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet1805-1859 · Germany · Academics0 decades
  23. 23Felix Klein1849-1925 · Germany · Academics15 decades
  24. 24Richard Dedekind1831-1916 · Germany · Academics8 decades
  25. 25Bruno Bauer1809-1882 · Germany · Academics19 decades
Show 75 more

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.