← 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 Hebrew books during the 20th century, whenever they lived.
- 1
Rav Ashi16 - 2
Ahad Ha'am12 - 3
Haggai12 - 4
Sabbatai Zevi8.2 - 5Saadia Gaon8.1
- 6
Johanan ben Zakai5.5 - 7
Josephus5.5 - 8
Habakkuk5.3 - 9
Hai Gaon4.8 - 10Simeon ben Gamliel II4.8
- 11
Menachem Begin4.4 - 12Nathan the Babylonian3.8
- 13
Shimon Peres3.6 - 14
Paul the Apostle3.3 - 15Samuel ibn Naghrillah3.2
- 16
Moshe Dayan3.2 - 17Judah ben Samuel of Regensburg3.1
- 18
Hillel the Elder3.1 - 19Simeon ben Zoma2.8
- 20
Judas Maccabeus2.7 - 21
Yitzhak Rabin2.7 - 22
Golda Meir2.6 - 23Yanai2.5
- 24
Moshe Sharett2.2 - 25
Isaac Abrabanel2.1
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 20th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Charlie Chaplin11 decades - 2
Audrey Hepburn7 decades - 3
Elizabeth Taylor9 decades - 4
Sean Connery6 decades - 5
Rowan Atkinson3 decades - 6
Michael Caine6 decades - 7
Gary Oldman3 decades - 8
Christopher Lee6 decades - 9
Helen Mirren4 decades - 10
Julie Andrews7 decades - 11
David Attenborough5 decades - 12
Maggie Smith6 decades - 13
Alan Rickman3 decades - 14
Emma Thompson3 decades - 15
Judi Dench5 decades - 16
Ian McKellen4 decades - 17
Richard Burtonnot measured- - 18
Ralph Fiennes3 decades - 19
Vivien Leigh8 decades - 20
Roger Moore7 decades - 21
Hugh Grant3 decades - 22
Ben Kingsley4 decades - 23
Peter O'Toole6 decades - 24
Jeremy Irons4 decades - 25
Colin Firth2 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.