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. 1Dmitri Mendeleev1834-1907 · Russia · Scientists11 decades
  2. 2Ivan Pavlov1849-1936 · Russia · Scientists16 decades
  3. 3Konstantin Tsiolkovsky1857-1935 · Russia · Scientists5 decades
  4. 4Peter Carl Fabergé1846-1920 · Russia · Scientists3 decades
  5. 5Nikolai Pirogov1810-1881 · Russia · Scientists15 decades
  6. 6Alexander Stepanovich Popov1859-1905 · Russia · Scientists15 decades
  7. 7Ivan Michurin1855-1935 · Russia · Scientists9 decades
  8. 8Stepan Makarov1849-1904 · Russia · Scientists8 decades
  9. 9Nikolay Zhukovsky1847-1921 · Russia · Scientists10 decades
  10. 10Ivan Sechenov1829-1905 · Russia · Scientists0 decades
  11. 11Vladimir Shukhov1853-1939 · Russia · Scientists3 decades
  12. 12Kliment Timiryazev1843-1920 · Russia · Scientists9 decades
  13. 13Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky1827-1914 · Russia · Scientistsnot measured-
  14. 14Karl Ernst von Baer1792-1876 · Russia · Scientists0 decades
  15. 15Alexander Butlerov1828-1886 · Russia · Scientists10 decades
  16. 16Vladimir A. Obruchev1863-1956 · Russia · Scientists9 decades
  17. 17Vasili Dokuchayev1846-1903 · Russia · Scientists7 decades
  18. 18Emil Lenz1804-1865 · Russia · Scientists2 decades
  19. 19Mikhail Ostrogradsky1801-1861 · Russia · Scientists3 decades
  20. 20Dmitri Ivanovsky1864-1920 · Russia · Scientists1 decades
  21. 21Alexander Mozhaysky1825-1890 · Russia · Scientists4 decades
  22. 22Grigory Potanin1835-1920 · Russia · Scientists8 decades
  23. 23Aleksey Krylov1863-1945 · Russia · Scientists9 decades
  24. 24Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve1793-1864 · Russia · Scientistsnot measured-
  25. 25Otto von Kotzebue1787-1846 · Russia · Scientists11 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.