← 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
Marilyn Monroe7 decades - 2
Bruce Lee5 decades - 3
Robin Williams7 decades - 4
Charlie Chaplin11 decades - 5
Arnold Schwarzenegger4 decades - 6
Brad Pitt3 decades - 7
Brigitte Bardot7 decades - 8
Robert De Niro5 decades - 9
Clint Eastwood6 decades - 10
Jackie Channot measured- - 11
Judy Garland9 decades - 12
Johnny Depp3 decades - 13
Tom Cruise4 decades - 14
Marlon Brando7 decades - 15
Tom Hanks4 decades - 16
Meryl Streep4 decades - 17
Audrey Hepburn7 decades - 18
Elizabeth Taylor9 decades - 19
Keanu Reeves3 decades - 20
Al Pacino5 decades - 21
Sean Connery6 decades - 22
Sandra Bullock3 decades - 23
Sylvester Stallone5 decades - 24
Jim Carrey3 decades - 25
George Clooney3 decades - 26
Jack Nicholson5 decades - 27
Bruce Willis4 decades - 28
Nicolas Cage3 decades - 29
Harrison Ford4 decades - 30
Morgan Freeman3 decades - 31
Mel Gibson4 decades - 32
Rowan Atkinson3 decades - 33
Demi Moore3 decades - 34
Chuck Norris4 decades - 35
Jane Fonda6 decades - 36
John Travolta5 decades - 37
Anthony Hopkins5 decades - 38
Russell Crowe2 decades - 39
Denzel Washington3 decades - 40
Jodie Foster4 decades - 41
Sigourney Weaver4 decades - 42
Pierce Brosnan3 decades - 43
Sophia Loren7 decades - 44
Kevin Costner3 decades - 45
John Wayne9 decades - 46
Michael Caine6 decades - 47
Diane Keaton5 decades - 48
Eddie Murphy4 decades - 49
Katharine Hepburn9 decades - 50
Grace Kelly7 decades - 51
Gary Oldman3 decades - 52
Christopher Lee6 decades - 53
Paul Newman7 decades - 54
Liam Neeson3 decades - 55
Robert Redford5 decades - 56
Monica Bellucci3 decades - 57
Carrie Fisher4 decades - 58
Helen Mirren4 decades - 59
Steven Seagal3 decades - 60
Amitabh Bachchan4 decades - 61
Daniel Day-Lewis3 decades - 62
Sean Penn4 decades - 63
Oprah Winfrey4 decades - 64
Michelle Pfeiffer4 decades - 65
Michael Douglas5 decades - 66
Susan Sarandon4 decades - 67
Dustin Hoffman6 decades - 68
Julianne Moore3 decades - 69
Julie Andrews7 decades - 70
Jon Voight5 decades - 71
David Attenborough5 decades - 72
Robert Duvall5 decades - 73
Antonio Banderas4 decades - 74
Ingrid Bergman8 decades - 75
James Dean9 decades - 76
Whoopi Goldberg4 decades - 77
Samuel L. Jackson3 decades - 78
Cary Grant9 decades - 79
Marlene Dietrich9 decades - 80
Maggie Smith6 decades - 81
Liza Minnelli5 decades - 82
Humphrey Bogart9 decades - 83
Alain Delon6 decades - 84
Christopher Plummer7 decades - 85
Val Kilmer3 decades - 86
Gene Hackman5 decades - 87
James Gandolfini1 decades - 88
Kirk Douglas8 decades - 89
Alan Rickman3 decades - 90
Sally Field5 decades - 91
John Goodman7 decades - 92
Donald Sutherland7 decades - 93
Eva Perón8 decades - 94
Emma Thompson3 decades - 95
Sharon Stone3 decades - 96
Alec Baldwin3 decades - 97
Charles Bronson5 decades - 98
Michael J. Fox4 decades - 99
Kevin Spacey3 decades - 100
James Stewartnot 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.