← 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
Zhu Xi870 - 2
Li Hongzhang149 - 3
Zhang Zhidong86 - 4
Zuo Zongtang43 - 5
Ban Gu40 - 6
Ge Hong40 - 7Chen Shou14
- 8
Mao Zedong12 - 9
Lu Xun11
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 19th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Giuseppe Peano14 decades - 2
Niccolò Tommaseo20 decades - 3
Vito Volterra14 decades - 4
Antonio Labriola15 decades - 5
Vincenzo Gioberti20 decades - 6
Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro3 decades - 7
Paolo Mantegazza17 decades - 8
Giuseppe Mercalli8 decades - 9
Quintino Sellanot measured- - 10
Carlo Cattaneonot measured- - 11
Antonio Stoppaninot measured- - 12
Eugenio Beltrami15 decades - 13
Giuseppe Pitrè16 decades - 14
Paolo Orsinot measured- - 15
Ernesto Schiaparellinot measured- - 16
Teodolfo Mertelnot measured- - 17
Ulisse Dini15 decades - 18
Andrea Carlo Ferrarinot measured- - 19
Giuseppe Fiorellinot measured- - 20
Giovanni Battista Alberto Pirellinot measured- - 21
Luigi Taparellinot measured-
- 22
Maffeo Pantaleoninot measured- - 23
Enrico Betti16 decades - 24
Luigi Cremona17 decades - 25
Alfredo Panzininot measured-
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.