← 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 Chinese books during the 20th century, whenever they lived.
- 1
Mao Zedong275 - 2
Lu Xun60 - 3
Liu Shaoqi58 - 4
Zhou Enlai55 - 5
Lin Biao40 - 6
Deng Xiaoping34 - 7
Sun Yat-sen31 - 8
Jiang Zemin13 - 9
Confucius12 - 10
Jiang Qing10 - 11
Zhu De9.6 - 12
Cao Xueqin5.9 - 13
Li Peng5.4 - 14
Lee Teng-hui5.2 - 15
Yuan Shikai5.0 - 16
Laozi4.7 - 17
Lin Yutang4.6 - 18
Soong Ching-ling4.4 - 19Gao Ming3.4
- 20
Zhuang Zhou2.8 - 21
Li Bai2.3 - 22
Kang Youwei2.3 - 23
Li Hongzhang2.0 - 24Wang Chong1.9
- 25
Wang Anshi1.7
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 20th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Pope Benedict XVI2 decades - 2
Anne Frank7 decades - 3
Joseph Goebbels9 decades - 4
Hermann Göring9 decades - 5
Angela Merkel3 decades - 6
Heinrich Himmler9 decades - 7
Friedrich Merz3 decades - 8
Ursula von der Leyen2 decades - 9
Erwin Rommel8 decades - 10
Olaf Scholz2 decades - 11
Hans Zimmer3 decades - 12
Werner Heisenberg10 decades - 13
Konrad Adenauer8 decades - 14
Eva Braun8 decades - 15
Rosa Luxemburg13 decades - 16
Franz Beckenbauer5 decades - 17
Christoph Waltz1 decades - 18
Karl Dönitz8 decades - 19
Josef Mengele4 decades - 20
Reinhard Heydrich8 decades - 21
Frank-Walter Steinmeier3 decades - 22
Oskar Schindler4 decades - 23
Werner Herzog6 decades - 24
Willy Brandt8 decades - 25
Albert Speer9 decades - 26
Leni Riefenstahl9 decades - 27
Martin Heidegger10 decades - 28
Lothar Matthäus3 decades - 29
Helmut Schmidt9 decades - 30
Helmut Kohl6 decades - 31
Gerhard Schröder8 decades - 32
Charles Bukowski5 decades - 33
Martin Bormann8 decades - 34
Rainer Maria Rilke12 decades - 35
Dietrich Bonhoeffer8 decades - 36
Jürgen Habermas8 decades - 37
Erich Honecker8 decades - 38
Claus von Stauffenberg4 decades - 39
Joachim von Ribbentrop9 decades - 40
Erwin Schrödinger11 decades - 41
Karl Lagerfeld4 decades - 42
Gerd Müller7 decades - 43
Jürgen Klinsmann3 decades - 44
Nastassja Kinski3 decades - 45
Erich Maria Remarque10 decades - 46
Wilhelm Keitel8 decades - 47
Klaus Kinski5 decades - 48
Franz von Papen9 decades - 49
Ernst Röhm9 decades - 50
Wim Wenders5 decades - 51
Joachim Löw2 decades - 52
Fritz Haber11 decades - 53
Till Lindemann0 decades - 54
Erich von Manstein7 decades - 55
Heinz Guderian8 decades - 56
Sophie Scholl8 decades - 57
Roland Emmerich3 decades - 58
Alfred Rosenberg10 decades - 59
Günter Grass8 decades - 60
Friedrich Paulus7 decades - 61
Rudolf Höss7 decades - 62
Friedrich Ebert11 decades - 63
Mileva Marić0 decades - 64
Otto von Habsburg9 decades - 65
Carl Schmitt11 decades - 66
Emmy Noether7 decades - 67
Alfred Jodl8 decades - 68
Ernst Jünger10 decades - 69
Rudi Völler3 decades - 70
Julius Streicher9 decades - 71
Hans Frank12 decades - 72
Ludwig Erhard8 decades - 73
Erich Fromm9 decades - 74
Oswald Spengler11 decades - 75
Christian Wulff3 decades - 76
Fritz Lang9 decades - 77
Gerd von Rundstedt6 decades - 78
Joachim Gauck3 decades - 79
Nina Hagen5 decades - 80
Eckhart Tolle1 decades - 81
Ferdinand Porsche9 decades - 82
Martin Niemöller9 decades - 83
Dieter Bohlen3 decades - 84
Karl-Heinz Rummenigge3 decades - 85
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe7 decades - 86
Kurt Georg Kiesinger7 decades - 87
Til Schweiger3 decades - 88
Max Ernst12 decades - 89
Rainer Werner Fassbinder5 decades - 90
Klaus Barbie4 decades - 91
Kurt von Schleicher8 decades - 92
Udo Kiernot measured- - 93
Erich Kästner10 decades - 94
Ernst Thälmann9 decades - 95
Heinrich Böll8 decades - 96
Gustav Stresemann11 decades - 97
Walter Gropius11 decades - 98
Otto Hahn14 decades - 99
Niconot measured- - 100
Ulrike Meinhof5 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.