← 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
Donald Trump4 decades - 2
Michael Jackson5 decades - 3Adolf Hitler10 decades
- 4
Vladimir Putin3 decades - 5
Barack Obama2 decades - 6
Pope Francisnot measured- - 7
Elizabeth II8 decades - 8
John F. Kennedy11 decades - 9
Joe Biden4 decades - 10
Albert Einstein11 decades - 11
Joseph Stalin9 decades - 12
George W. Bush4 decades - 13
Elvis Presley7 decades - 14
Franklin D. Roosevelt10 decades - 15
Ronald Reagan9 decades - 16
Steve Jobs4 decades - 17
Xi Jinping3 decades - 18
Bob Dylan6 decades - 19
Winston Churchill13 decades - 20
Bill Clinton4 decades - 21
Pope Leo XIV0 decades - 22
Marilyn Monroe7 decades - 23
Madonnanot measured- - 24
Jimmy Carter7 decades - 25
Martin Luther King Jr.6 decades - 26
Benjamin Netanyahu4 decades - 27
Pope John Paul II5 decades - 28
Freddie Mercury3 decades - 29
Pope Benedict XVI2 decades - 30
Vladimir Lenin12 decades - 31
Benito Mussolini11 decades - 32
Ali Khamenei4 decades - 33
Osama bin Laden3 decades - 34
Mahatma Gandhi10 decades - 35
Mao Zedong13 decades - 36
Che Guevara7 decades - 37
Bruce Lee5 decades - 38
Stephen Hawking4 decades - 39
Robin Williams7 decades - 40
Charlie Chaplin11 decades - 41
George H. W. Bush2 decades - 42
Steven Spielberg5 decades - 43
John Lennon6 decades - 44
Arnold Schwarzenegger4 decades - 45
Diego Maradona4 decades - 46
Bill Gates4 decades - 47
Richard Nixon8 decades - 48
Brad Pitt3 decades - 49
Dwight D. Eisenhower9 decades - 50
Nicolás Maduro2 decades - 51
Muhammad Ali8 decades - 52
Saddam Hussein6 decades - 53
Narendra Modi2 decades - 54
Brigitte Bardot7 decades - 55
Paul McCartney6 decades - 56
Margaret Thatcher6 decades - 57
Frida Kahlo8 decades - 58
Michael Jordan4 decades - 59
Nelson Mandela6 decades - 60
Muammar Gaddafi2 decades - 61
Robert De Niro5 decades - 62
Clint Eastwood6 decades - 63
J. R. R. Tolkien7 decades - 64
Diana, Princess of Wales0 decades - 65
Mikhail Gorbachev4 decades - 66
Kamala Harris1 decades - 67
Fidel Castro10 decades - 68
Lyndon B. Johnson8 decades - 69
Jackie Channot measured- - 70
Judy Garland9 decades - 71
David Bowie5 decades - 72
Johnny Depp3 decades - 73
Ernest Hemingway10 decades - 74
Marie Curie4 decades - 75
Tom Cruise4 decades - 76
Marlon Brando7 decades - 77
Tom Hanks4 decades - 78
Tupac Shakur3 decades - 79
Meryl Streep4 decades - 80
Harry S. Truman9 decades - 81
Pablo Picasso10 decades - 82
Audrey Hepburn7 decades - 83
Woody Allen6 decades - 84
Pelé3 decades - 85
Bob Marley5 decades - 86
Elizabeth Taylor9 decades - 87
Charles de Gaulle9 decades - 88
Dolly Parton5 decades - 89
Alan Turing4 decades - 90
Gerald Ford6 decades - 91
Keanu Reeves3 decades - 92
Whitney Houston4 decades - 93
Al Pacino5 decades - 94
Sean Connery6 decades - 95
Keir Starmer0 decades - 96
Stephen King8 decades - 97
Alfred Hitchcock9 decades - 98
Walt Disney10 decades - 99
J. Robert Oppenheimer8 decades - 100
Ruhollah Khomeini5 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.