← 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 English books during the 19th century, whenever they lived.
- 1
Jesus94 - 2
Homer15 - 3
Cicero13 - 4
Augustus13 - 5
Plato10 - 6
Virgil9.6 - 7
Aristotle9.4 - 8
Socrates6.4 - 9
Herodotus6.2 - 10
Plutarch5.6 - 11
Ovid4.2 - 12
Strabo4.1 - 13
Charlemagne3.9 - 14
Demosthenes3.8 - 15
Lord Byron3.6 - 16
Livy3.4 - 17
Origen3.1 - 18
Cleopatra3.0 - 19
Xenophon3.0 - 20
Walter Scott3.0 - 21
Tertullian2.7 - 22
James II, Count of Urgell2.6 - 23
Robert Peel2.6 - 24
Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor2.6 - 25
Pericles2.5
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 19th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Sigmund Freud12 decades - 2
Robert Koch14 decades - 3
Ignaz Semmelweis6 decades - 4
L. L. Zamenhofnot measured- - 5
Paul Ehrlich13 decades - 6
Joseph Lister18 decades - 7
Rudolf Virchow16 decades - 8
Cesare Lombroso16 decades - 9
Jean-Martin Charcot4 decades - 10
Alois Alzheimer3 decades - 11
Emil von Behring11 decades - 12
Elizabeth Blackwell17 decades - 13
Anandi Gopal Joshinot measured- - 14
John Snow21 decades - 15
Vladimir Bekhterev5 decades - 16
René Laennec0 decades - 17
Camillo Golgi15 decades - 18
Havelock Ellis14 decades - 19
Ronald Ross13 decades - 20
Doc Holliday8 decades - 21
John Harvey Kellogg5 decades - 22
William Osler14 decades - 23
John Langdon Down0 decades - 24
James Barry22 decades - 25
William Walkernot measured- - 26
Mary Edwards Walker0 decades - 27
Eugen Bleuler10 decades - 28
Theodor Schwann16 decades - 29
Elias Lönnrot0 decades - 30
Kadambini Ganguly0 decades - 31
Axel Munthe2 decades - 32
Niels Ryberg Finsen0 decades - 33
Richard von Krafft-Ebing4 decades - 34
Alexandre Yersin5 decades - 35
Max Nordau14 decades - 36
Paul Broca15 decades - 37
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson7 decades - 38
Julius Wagner-Jauregg2 decades - 39
Wong Fei-hungnot measured- - 40
Charles Richet15 decades - 41
Henry Graynot measured- - 42
Xavier Bichat15 decades - 43
Gerhard Armauer Hansen0 decades - 44
Frederick Hopkins1 decades - 45
William T. G. Morton2 decades - 46
Emil Theodor Kocher12 decades - 47
Leonard Wood13 decades - 48
Josef Breuer12 decades - 49
Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran4 decades - 50
Theodor Billroth17 decades - 51
James Curtis Hepburn0 decades - 52
Carlos Juan Finlay0 decades - 53
Charles Bell22 decades - 54
Joseph Bellnot measured- - 55
Christiaan Eijkman0 decades - 56
Dominique Jean Larrey0 decades - 57
Joseph Babinski0 decades - 58
Franz Oppenheimer13 decades - 59
Waldemar Haffkine0 decades - 60
Aletta Jacobs0 decades - 61
Robert Knox22 decades - 62
Nikolay Gamaleya2 decades - 63
Rukhmabai1 decades - 64
Karl Theodor, Duke in Bavaria3 decades - 65
Georges Gilles de la Tourette0 decades - 66
Paul Gachet5 decades - 67
Aimé Bonpland13 decades - 68
Ernst Heinrich Weber15 decades - 69
Anna Kuliscioff12 decades - 70
Albert Calmette11 decades - 71
Hudson Taylor14 decades - 72
Eugène Dubois10 decades - 73
Emil du Bois-Reymond16 decades - 74
Auguste Forel11 decades - 75
Thomas Addison12 decades - 76
Thomas Hodgkin18 decades - 77
Paul Langerhans2 decades - 78
William Stewart Halstednot measured- - 79
Carl Wernicke3 decades - 80
Jean Marc Gaspard Itard7 decades - 81
James Braid7 decades - 82
Kusumoto Inenot measured- - 83
Guillaume Dupuytren1 decades - 84
Christian Bohr0 decades - 85
Leon Pinsker0 decades - 86
James Young Simpson2 decades - 87
Carl von Rokitansky1 decades - 88
José Gregorio Hernándeznot measured- - 89
Charles Eastmannot measured- - 90
Anna Kingsford3 decades - 91
Edward Granville Browne0 decades - 92
Robert Listonnot measured- - 93
J. Marion Simsnot measured- - 94
Paul Réenot measured- - 95
Sir William Gull, 1st Baronetnot measured- - 96
Prince Ludwig Ferdinand of Bavarianot measured- - 97
Hawley Harvey Crippennot measured- - 98
Allvar Gullstrand0 decades - 99
Sergey Petrovich Botkinnot measured- - 100
Pieter Bleeker0 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.