← 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 Italian books during the 20th century, whenever they lived.
- 1
Giotto5.4 - 2
Dante Alighieri5.0 - 3
Caravaggio3.8 - 4
Leonardo da Vinci3.8 - 5
Antonio da Correggio3.7 - 6
Benedetto Croce3.3 - 7
Donato Bramante2.9 - 8
Donatello2.8 - 9
Giuseppe Mazzini2.2 - 10
Alessandro Manzoni2.2 - 11
Ugo Foscolo2.1 - 12
Pietro Perugino2.0 - 13
Tintoretto1.9 - 14
Francis of Assisi1.8 - 15
Giacomo Leopardi1.8 - 16
Benito Mussolini1.8 - 17
Torquato Tasso1.7 - 18
Masaccio1.7 - 19
Giordano Bruno1.6 - 20
Lorenzo de' Medici1.6 - 21
Galileo Galilei1.6 - 22
Charles Borromeo1.6 - 23
Giosuè Carducci1.5 - 24
Marco Polo1.4 - 25
Giuseppe Verdi1.4
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 20th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Alfred Hitchcock9 decades - 2
Ridley Scott4 decades - 3
Danny Boyle2 decades - 4
Terry Gilliam4 decades - 5
Tony Scott6 decades - 6
Frank Oz2 decades - 7
David Lean8 decades - 8
Anthony Minghella2 decades - 9
Ken Loach3 decades - 10
Alan Parker5 decades - 11
Tony Richardsonnot measured- - 12
David Yatesnot measured- - 13
Ken Russellnot measured- - 14
John Boormannot measured- - 15
Peter Greenawaynot measured- - 16
Stephen Frearsnot measured- - 17
David Heymannot measured- - 18
Michael Aptednot measured- - 19
Nick Parknot measured- - 20
Andrea Arnoldnot measured- - 21
Roland Joffénot measured- - 22
Carol Reednot measured- - 23John Schlesingernot measured-
- 24
Michael Winterbottomnot measured- - 25
Betty Williamsnot 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.