← Fame through time1900-1999
The 20th century
Whose names filled the books of the 20th 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 German books during the 20th century, whenever they lived.
- 1
Thomas Mann6.1 - 2
Novalis5.5 - 3
Karl Marx4.7 - 4
Jean Paul4.3 - 5
Adolf Hitler2.6 - 6
Maria Theresa2.5 - 7
Max Weber2.5 - 8
Paracelsus2.5 - 9
Richard Wagner2.4 - 10
Friedrich Engels2.3 - 11
Friedrich Schlegel1.8 - 12
Erich Honecker1.7 - 13
Heinrich Mann1.7 - 14
Martin Luther1.6 - 15
Heinrich Heine1.6 - 16
Charles Augustus, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach1.5 - 17
Karl Kraus1.5 - 18
Walter Ulbricht1.4 - 19
Hans Sachs1.4 - 20
William IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel1.4 - 21
Gottfried Keller1.4 - 22
Rosa Luxemburg1.4 - 23
Gerhart Hauptmann1.4 - 24
Gustav Adolph, Duke of Mecklenburg-Güstrow1.3 - 25
Tannhäuser1.3
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 20th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Elizabeth II8 decades - 2
Winston Churchill13 decades - 3
Freddie Mercury3 decades - 4
Stephen Hawking4 decades - 5
Charlie Chaplin11 decades - 6
John Lennon6 decades - 7
Paul McCartney6 decades - 8
Margaret Thatcher6 decades - 9
J. R. R. Tolkien7 decades - 10
Diana, Princess of Wales0 decades - 11
David Bowie5 decades - 12
Audrey Hepburn7 decades - 13
Elizabeth Taylor9 decades - 14
Alan Turing4 decades - 15
Sean Connery6 decades - 16
Keir Starmer0 decades - 17
Alfred Hitchcock9 decades - 18
Agatha Christie10 decades - 19
George VI10 decades - 20
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh0 decades - 21
George Harrisonnot measured- - 22
George Orwell9 decades - 23
Rowan Atkinson3 decades - 24
Jane Goodall5 decades - 25
Elton John5 decades - 26
Ozzy Osbourne3 decades - 27
George V16 decades - 28
Edward VIII9 decades - 29
Ringo Starr5 decades - 30
Tony Blair3 decades - 31
Michael Caine6 decades - 32
George Michaelnot measured- - 33
Gary Oldman3 decades - 34
Christopher Lee6 decades - 35
Helen Mirren4 decades - 36
Virginia Woolf10 decades - 37
C. S. Lewis10 decades - 38
Eric Clapton5 decades - 39
Mick Jagger5 decades - 40
Julie Andrews7 decades - 41
David Attenborough5 decades - 42
Phil Collins4 decades - 43
Salman Rushdie4 decades - 44
Maggie Smith6 decades - 45
Alan Rickman3 decades - 46
Alex Ferguson2 decades - 47
Emma Thompson3 decades - 48
Judi Dench5 decades - 49
Ian McKellen4 decades - 50
Ridley Scott4 decades - 51
Richard Burtonnot measured- - 52
Rudyard Kipling13 decades - 53
Ian Fleming7 decades - 54
Ralph Fiennes3 decades - 55
Vivien Leigh8 decades - 56
Roger Moore7 decades - 57
Hugh Grant3 decades - 58
Ben Kingsley4 decades - 59
Peter O'Toole6 decades - 60
Brian May3 decades - 61
Jeremy Irons4 decades - 62
Tim Berners-Lee3 decades - 63
Nigel Farage1 decades - 64
Colin Firth2 decades - 65
Hugh Laurie1 decades - 66
Laurence Olivier9 decades - 67
Neil Gaiman2 decades - 68
Neville Chamberlain16 decades - 69
Gordon Brown7 decades - 70
Charles IIInot measured- - 71
H. G. Wells16 decades - 72
Rod Stewart5 decades - 73
Bertrand Russell13 decades - 74
T. E. Lawrence10 decades - 75
Keith Richards4 decades - 76
Theresa May2 decades - 77
Malcolm McDowell5 decades - 78
Richard Attenborough7 decades - 79
Ludwig Wittgenstein8 decades - 80
Ian McShane0 decades - 81
Richard Branson4 decades - 82
Patrick Stewart4 decades - 83
John Major8 decades - 84
Harold Wilson11 decades - 85
Olivia Newton-John5 decades - 86
Charlotte Rampling3 decades - 87
Andy Serkis0 decades - 88
Jimmy Page3 decades - 89
Aldous Huxley10 decades - 90
Gary Lineker1 decades - 91
Richard Dawkins4 decades - 92
Tim Curry4 decades - 93
Anne, Princess Royalnot measured- - 94
Bonnie Tyler0 decades - 95
Aleister Crowley7 decades - 96
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother6 decades - 97
Robert Plant4 decades - 98
John Cleese4 decades - 99
Angela Lansbury6 decades - 100
Vanessa Redgrave6 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.