Who truly made a mark on history?
Riverhead
It used to be a matter of opinion, but in the era of Big Data, researchers may be able to prove it scientifically. Google is in the process of digitizing every book ever printed in English — this year it passed the 30 million book mark.
In their new book, “Uncharted,” scientists Erez Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel explain the trends in language and culture they discovered using this massive database.
They’ve found, for instance, that the use of the phrase “Merry Christmas” only really took off after Charles Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol.” That “have sex” only started appearing regularly in books in the mid-1900s and finally surpassed “making love” only recently. How references to coffee overtook tea in 1968.
One of the more interesting examinations was done by the authors and a researcher named Adrian Veres. They looked at notable people born in a particular year and figured out which one was mentioned in books more than any other. For instance, of those born in 1809, an Illinois baby named Abraham Lincoln would go on to be cited the most in 200 years of book writing.
Of course, this methodology has issues. Since it only covers books and not newspapers (or, in modern times, radio or television), it doesn’t reflect all of culture. Academics cited by other academics (the people who write the most books) tend to be unduly weighted.
Take, for instance, the stretch from 1854-58. Most people probably know Oscar Wilde, Woodrow Wilson, Pius XI, Theodore Roosevelt. But Josiah Royce?
The study also only tracked full-name references, which resulted in one big omission. A name that doesn’t make this list, yet is the most famous person born in the last two centuries by last-name reference, is Adolf Hitler.
Still, it’s fascinating to look at who made their mark on the printed page — and how many of them a literate person today can even identify.
Of the 150 names, only 116 were correctly identified by a Harvard history professor, according to the authors. A journalist managed 103, a recent college grad 73. Can you do better?
How many can you identify?
Most famous person born each year from 1800-1949, as measured by references in books (answers at bottom)
1800: George Bancroft
1801: Brigham Young
1802: Victor Hugo
1803: Ralph Waldo Emerson
1804: George Sand
1805: William Lloyd Garrison
1806: John Stuart Mill
1807: Louis Agassiz
1808: Napoleon III
1809: Abraham Lincoln
1810: Leo XIII
1811: Horace Greeley
1812: Charles Dickens
1813: Henry Ward Beecher
1814: Charles Reade
1815: Anthony Trollope
1816: Russell Sage
1817: Henry David Thoreau
1818: Karl Marx
1819: George Eliot
1820: Herbert Spencer
1821: Mary Baker Eddy
1822: Matthew Arnold
1823: Goldwin Smith
1824: Stonewall Jackson
1825: Bayard Taylor
1826: Walter Bagehot
1827: Charles Eliot Norton
1828: George Meredith
1829: Carl Schurz
1830: Emily Dickinson
1831: Sitting Bull
1832: Leslie Stephen
1833: Edwin Booth
1834: William Morris
1835: Mark Twain
1836: Bret Harte
1837: Grover Cleveland
1838: John Morley
1839: Henry George
1840: Crazy Horse
1841: Edward VII
1842: Alfred Marshall
1843: Henry James
1844: Anatole France
1845: Elihu Root
1846: Buffalo Bill
1847: Ellen Terry
1848: Grant Allen
1849: Edmund Gosse
1850: Robert Louis Stevenson
1851: Oliver Lodge
1852: Brander Matthews
1853: Cecil Rhodes
1854: Oscar Wilde
1855: Josiah Royce
1856: Woodrow Wilson
1857: Pius XI
1858: Theodore Roosevelt
1859: John Dewey
1860: Jane Addams
1861: Rabindranath Tagore
1862: Edward Grey
1863: David Lloyd George
1864: Max Weber
1865: Rudyard Kipling
1866: Ramsay MacDonald
1867: Arnold Bennett
1868: William Allen White
1869: Andre Gide
1870: Frank Norris
1871: Cordell Hull
1872: Sri Aurobindo
1873: Al Smith
1874: Winston Churchill
1875: Thomas Mann
1876: Piux XII
1877: Isadora Duncan
1878: Carl Sandburg
1879: Albert Einstein
1880: Douglas MacArthur
1881: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
1882: Virginia Woolf
1883: William Carlos Williams
1884: Harry Truman
1885: Ezra Pound
1886: Van Wyck Brooks
1887: Rupert Brooke
1888: John Foster Dulles
1889: Jawaharlal Nehru
1890: Ho Chi Minh
1891: Hu Shih
1892: Reinhold Niebuhr
1893: Mao Zedong
1894: Aldous Huxley
1895: George VI
1896: John Dos Passos
1897: William Faulkner
1898: Gunnar Myrdal
1899: Ernest Hemingway
1900: Adlai Stevenson
1901: Margaret Mead
1902: Talcott Parsons
1903: George Orwell
1904: Deng Xiaoping
1905: Jean-Paul Sartre
1906: Hannah Arendt
1907: Laurence Olivier
1908: Lyndon Johnson
1909: Barry Goldwater
1910: Mother Teresa
1911: Ronald Reagan
1912: Milton Friedman
1913: Richard Nixon
1914: Dylan Thomas
1915: Roland Barthes
1916: C. Wright Mills
1917: Indira Gandhi
1918: Billy Graham
1919: Daniel Bell
1920: Irving Howe
1921: Raymond Williams
1922: George McGovern
1923: Henry Kissinger
1924: Jimmy Carter
1925: Robert Kennedy
1926: Fidel Castro
1927: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
1928: Che Guevara
1929: Martin Luther King Jr.
1930: Jacques Derrida
1931: Mikhail Gorbachev
1932: Sylvia Plath
1933: Susan Sontag
1934: Ralph Nader
1935: Elvis Presley
1936: Carol Gilligan
1937: Saddam Hussein
1938: Anthony Giddens
1939: Lee Harvey Oswald
1940: John Lennon
1941: Bob Dylan
1942: Barbra Streisand
1943: Terry Eagleton
1944: Rajiv Gandhi
1945: Daniel Ortega
1946: Bill Clinton
1947: Salman Rushdie
1948: Clarence Thomas
1949: Nawaz Sharif
Answers
1800: Historian, founder of US Naval Academy
1801: Mormon leader, founder of Salt Lake City
1802: French author, “Les Misérables”
1803: US poet, leader of Transcendentalism
1804: Pseudonym of French novelist Amantine Lucile Dupin
1805: US abolitionist
1806: English philosopher, author, “On Liberty”
1807: Swiss scientist, first to propose Ice Age
1808: First president and last king of France
1809: US president
1810: Oldest pope
1811: Founder and editor of New York Tribune, US presidential candidate
1812: English novelist, “Tale of Two Cities”
1813: US clergyman, abolitionist
1814: English novelist, “The Cloister and the Hearth”
1815: English novelist, “The Warden”
1816: US politician, railroad executive, surviving wife set up philanthropies in his name
1817: US author, “Walden”
1818: German philosopher, “The Communist Manifesto”
1819: Pen name of English novelist Mary Anne Evans, “Middlemarch”
1820: English biologist, evolution pioneer, coined “survival of the fittest”
1821: US founder of Christian Science
1822: British poet, “Dover Beach”
1823: British historian and journalist
1824: Confederate general in Civil War
1825: US poet, travel journalist
1826: British journalist, founder of the National Review and editor of The Economist
1827: US social critic, proponent of arts and crafts movement
1828: English novelist and poet, “Modern Love”
1829: US secretary of the interior
1830: US poet
1831: Lakota chief, defeated Custer
1832: English author, mountain climber
1833: Famous American actor, brother killed Lincoln
1834: English textile designer, artist
1835: Author, “Huckleberry Finn”
1836: US author of Westerns, “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”
1837: US president
1838: British liberal politician
1839: US political economist, “Progress and Poverty”
1840: Lakota warrior
1841: King of England
1842: One of the founders of economics, “Principles of Economics”
1843: British author, “The Turn of the Screw”
1844: French novelist, “Thaïs”
1845: US secretary of state, helped create World Court and Hague, winner of Nobel Peace Prize
1846: Showman, bison hunter
1847: English stage actress, noted for her Shakespearean portrayals
1848: Science writer, upheld theory of evolution
1849: English poet and author, “Father and Son”
1850: Scottish author, “Treasure Island”
1851: British developer of wireless telegraph
1852: First professor of dramatic literature at Columbia, promoter of theater
1853: Founder of Rhodesia, first chairman of De Beers; Rhodes Scholarship funded by his estate
1854: Irish writer, “The Importance of Being Earnest”
1855: American philosopher
1856: US president
1857: Pope
1858: US president
1859: US education reformer
1860: US social worker, Nobel Peace Prize winner
1861: Indian author, first non-European to win Nobel Prize for Literature, “Gitanjali”
1862: British foreign secretary
1863: British prime minister
1864: German political economist, “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”
1865: English author, “The Jungle Book”
1866: British prime minister, first from Labour Party
1867: English author, “The Card”
1868: Progressive leader, newspaper editor, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”
1869: French author, winner of Nobel Prize for Literature
1870: US naturalist, novelist, “McTeague”
1871: Longest serving US secretary of state
1872: Indian freedom fighter, popularized yoga
1873: Governor of New York, presidential candidate, has dinner named after him
1874: British prime minister
1875: German author, “Death in Venice,” Nobel winner
1876: Pope
1877: American dancer
1878: US writer, Lincoln biographer, Pulitzer winner
1879: Physicist, theory of relativity
1880: US general
1881: Paleontologist, helped discover Peking Man, idea of Omega Point
1882: English writer, “Mrs Dalloway”
1883: Poet, “The Red Wheelbarrow”
1884: US president
1885: Poet, “Ripostes,” editor
1886: Biographer and historian
1887: English poet, “The Soldier”
1888: US secretary of state
1889: First prime minister of India
1890: President of North Vietnam, communist revolutionary
1891: Chinese philosopher, advocate for modern written Chinese
1892: US theologian, wrote the Serenity Prayer
1893: Founding father of communist China
1894: English writer, “Brave New World”
1895: King of England
1896: US writer, “USA Trilogy”
1897: US writer, “The Sound and the Fury”
1898: Nobel-winning Swedish economist
1899: US writer, “The Sun Also Rises”
1900: US presidential candidate, UN ambassador
1901: Cultural anthropologist, informed sexual revolution
1902: Sociologist, “Toward a General Theory of Action”
1903: British author, “1984”
1904: Chinese leader
1905: Philosopher, playwright, “No Exit”
1906: German-American political theorist, “The Human Condition”
1907: English actor
1908: US president
1909: US senator, presidential candidate
1910: Catholic nun, Nobel Peace Prize winner
1911: US president
1912: US economist, Nobel winner
1913: US president
1914: Welsh poet, “Do not go gentle into that good night”
1915: French literary theorist
1916: US sociologist, “The Power Elite”
1917: Prime minister of India
1918: US spiritual leader
1919: US sociologist, post-industrialism
1920: US socialist
1921: Welsh leftist critic
1922: US senator, presidential candidate
1923: US secretary of state
1924: US president
1925: US attorney general, presidential candidate
1926: Cuban president, revolutionary
1927: Colombian writer, “Love in the Time of Cholera”
1928: Argentine Marxist revolutionary
1929: US Civil Rights leader
1930: French philosopher
1931: Last leader of the Soviet Union
1932: US poet, novelist, “The Bell Jar”
1933: US political activist, writer, “The Way We Live Now”
1934: US political activist, “Unsafe at Any Speed”
1935: US rock star
1936: US feminist, psychologist, “In a Different Voice”
1937: Dictator of Iraq
1938: British sociologist, theory of structuration
1939: Killer of JFK
1940: British rock star
1941: US rock star
1942: US actress and singer
1943: British literary theorist, “Literary Theory: An Introduction”
1944: Prime minister of India
1945: President of Nicaragua
1946: US president
1947: British Indian writer, “The Satanic Verses”
1948: US Supreme Court justice
1949: Prime minister of Pakistan