← 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 English books during the 20th century, whenever they lived.
- 1
Jesus30 - 2
Aristotle7.1 - 3
Plato7.1 - 4
Homer7.1 - 5
Augustus4.9 - 6
Johns Hopkins4.4 - 7
Cicero4.0 - 8
George Washington3.8 - 9
Socrates3.4 - 10
Virgil3.3 - 11
Abraham Lincoln2.0 - 12
Euclid1.9 - 13
Thomas Jefferson1.6 - 14
Ovid1.6 - 15
Mark Twain1.5 - 16
Plutarch1.5 - 17
Cleopatra1.4 - 18
Theodore Roosevelt1.4 - 19
Woodrow Wilson1.4 - 20
William Henry1.3 - 21
Benjamin Franklin1.3 - 22
Herodotus1.3 - 23
Charlemagne1.3 - 24
Rembrandt1.3 - 25
Euripides1.2
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
Brad Pitt3 decades - 5
Robert De Niro5 decades - 6
Clint Eastwood6 decades - 7
Jackie Channot measured- - 8
Judy Garland9 decades - 9
Johnny Depp3 decades - 10
Tom Cruise4 decades - 11
Marlon Brando7 decades - 12
Tom Hanks4 decades - 13
Meryl Streep4 decades - 14
Al Pacino5 decades - 15
Sandra Bullock3 decades - 16
Sylvester Stallone5 decades - 17
Jim Carrey3 decades - 18
George Clooney3 decades - 19
Jack Nicholson5 decades - 20
Bruce Willis4 decades - 21
Nicolas Cage3 decades - 22
Harrison Ford4 decades - 23
Morgan Freeman3 decades - 24
Mel Gibson4 decades - 25
Demi Moore3 decades - 26
Chuck Norris4 decades - 27
Jane Fonda6 decades - 28
John Travolta5 decades - 29
Anthony Hopkins5 decades - 30
Denzel Washington3 decades - 31
Jodie Foster4 decades - 32
Sigourney Weaver4 decades - 33
Kevin Costner3 decades - 34
John Wayne9 decades - 35
Diane Keaton5 decades - 36
Eddie Murphy4 decades - 37
Katharine Hepburn9 decades - 38
Grace Kelly7 decades - 39
Paul Newman7 decades - 40
Robert Redford5 decades - 41
Carrie Fisher4 decades - 42
Steven Seagal3 decades - 43
Sean Penn4 decades - 44
Oprah Winfrey4 decades - 45
Michelle Pfeiffer4 decades - 46
Michael Douglas5 decades - 47
Susan Sarandon4 decades - 48
Dustin Hoffman6 decades - 49
Julianne Moore3 decades - 50
Jon Voight5 decades - 51
Robert Duvall5 decades - 52
James Dean9 decades - 53
Whoopi Goldberg4 decades - 54
Samuel L. Jackson3 decades - 55
Cary Grant9 decades - 56
Marlene Dietrich9 decades - 57
Liza Minnelli5 decades - 58
Humphrey Bogart9 decades - 59
Val Kilmer3 decades - 60
Gene Hackman5 decades - 61
James Gandolfini1 decades - 62
Kirk Douglas8 decades - 63
Sally Field5 decades - 64
John Goodman7 decades - 65
Sharon Stone3 decades - 66
Alec Baldwin3 decades - 67
Charles Bronson5 decades - 68
Michael J. Fox4 decades - 69
Kevin Spacey3 decades - 70
James Stewartnot measured- - 71
Shirley MacLaine6 decades - 72
Richard Gere4 decades - 73
Bryan Cranston0 decades - 74
Clark Gable9 decades - 75
Bette Davis9 decades - 76
Gregory Peck8 decades - 77
Danny DeVito3 decades - 78
Gene Wilder5 decades - 79
Lauren Bacall8 decades - 80
Willem Dafoe3 decades - 81
Courteney Cox1 decades - 82
Goldie Hawn5 decades - 83
Rita Hayworth8 decades - 84
Bill Murray6 decades - 85
Joan Crawford10 decades - 86
Shirley Templenot measured- - 87
Henry Fonda9 decades - 88
Bill Cosby6 decades - 89
Michael Clarke Duncan0 decades - 90
Jet Li4 decades - 91
Jamie Lee Curtis4 decades - 92
Patrick Swayze3 decades - 93
Kathy Bates3 decades - 94
Kim Basinger4 decades - 95
Jeff Bridges5 decades - 96
Carl Reiner6 decades - 97
Woody Harrelson3 decades - 98
Viggo Mortensen2 decades - 99
Tommy Lee Jones4 decades - 100
Glenn Close4 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.