World famous (OK, maybe not so much now, but he was famous for reals back in the 1970s) but of a category for which there’s only one famous person.
Cousteau was a world-famous underwater photographer . . . actually the only famous underwater photographer.
Another example, also from the 70s (sorry): Marcel Marceau. A world-famous mime . . . actually the only famous mime.
I’d also like to include Jane Goodall, world-famous primatologist . . . but there’s also Dian Fossey.
Jack Chick was a world-famous religious cartoonist . . . actually the only famous religious cartoonist. But that seems like too offbeat a category, it’s like we’re saying he’s the only famous Jack Chick. Cos really his job wasn’t “religious cartoonist,” it was just being himself.
Jimmy Carter was a world-famous peanut farmer, and there were no other famous peanut farmers, at least not since George Washington Carver. But being a peanut farmer was not what Carter was famous for. Also, maybe “peanut farmer” is too artificially specific.
The guy who wrote All Creatures Great and Small was a world-famous veterinarian, and I can’t think of any other famous veterinarians, so I guess that works. To my taste, though he doesn’t quite fit into the template. It’s something about him being famous for writing. Cousteau and Marceau were famous not just for publicizing what they did, they were famous for what they did itself, if you know what I mean.
Then there are people who are so damn famous they’re unique. Jesus is the only Jesus. But that won’t work. The point is that there should be others of the category, just not other famous people of the category.
And it won’t work to take people like Danica Patrick or some other such trailblazer. Patrick’s category is “race-car driver,” not “female race-car driver”—and there are a lot of famous race-car drivers.
Ummm . . . Jackson Pollock is a world-famous drip painter, and indeed the only famous drip painter. But it’s not clear to me that “drip painter” should count as a category.
To return to the 1970s for a moment: back then Carl Sagan was a world-famous astronomer, and the only famous astronomer. Since then there’s that other astronomer guy who had the TV show, and before there were Copernicus, Kepler, Gauss, etc., so I guess Sagan doesn’t work.
That guy Joseph Joanovici was a world-famous scrap-metal dealer, at least for anyone who read Il Était Une Fois en France, and I can’t think of any other famous scrap metal dealers, but I guess we can’t really say that Monsieur Joseph is really world-famous.
Hey, here’s one I just thought of . . . Tony Hawk! At least, he’s the only famous skateboarder I’ve ever heard of.
I feel like there must be lots more people in the class Jacques Cousteau that I can’t think of. Can you help?
P.S. See here for more objects of the class “Objects of the Class.”
P.P.S. Some good suggestions in comments. Also, I thought of another:
Nate Silver, world-famous statistician. And there are no other famous statisticians. OK, maybe Bill James, but that’s it.
Joe Rogan has been in other threads — is there enough of a gap between him and other podcasters to make him unique?
I assume there will inevitably be other more famous podcasters. There’s certainly a ton of contemporary pretty famous podcasters, but in terms of household names that’s the one I’d guess people know the most.
Rogan only has a chance if the category is narrowed to podcasters. If we include nearly equivalent distribution technologies, Howard Stern was there first, probably others.
Re Marcel Marceau… Jacques Tati and Charlie Chaplin both heavily used elements of mime… so there’s some issues with how to fit people into particular categories…although I’d agree that Marceau does fit into a different category.
As it turns out the Wikipedia entry on Marceau is interesting and kinda makes me feel bad for all the mockery he later received. Apparently Chaplin’s mime was inspirational for him.
Shirley Temple – number one box office draw as a 6 year-old.
Shirley Temple seems good. Famous for being a kid people liked in movies. And the name stands the test of time.
There are other kids in movies, but the ones I recall now are either not so liked (Star Wars Episode 1) or probably pretty replaceable (Home Alone).
Joshua:
Maybe. But back then there were other famous kid actors. I agree that Shirley Temple was the most famous, but there were other famous ones. Jackie Coogan, for example.
I’m not sure exactly how the category distinctions work. Even for Cousteau, level of fame isn’t exactly a dichotomous category although he’s clearly in a category of his own.
Maybe Shirley Temple was so far above the #2 child star the it would work for her?
Maybe the criterion should be that hardly anyone can name #2?
I wouldn’t have been able to come up with Coogan, although maybe most people from my parents’ generation could have.
Try watching a clip of The Good Ship Lolipop.
Seems like another planet where a six year old girl dancing with a bunch of young men could be such a huge hit.
I think it’s the same planet that saw “Schnappi Das Kleine Krokodil” top the charts in six countries in 2005 and reach the top 10 in Australia and New Zealand.
I don’t think Shirley Temple is a good example. Even if there were no other famous child actors at the time, there certainly have been since then (like Macauley Culkin, for instance). But I think she was approximately contemporary with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. She was by far the most popular and presumably the most famous but even back then she wasn’t the only famous child actor.
J.J. Audubon (ornithologist)?
I’m also tempted to say Lance Armstrong (cyclist). Could just be my ignorance though:
Well there are lots of other famous athletes, like Michael Phelps seems pretty close to (if you pretend the cheating wasn’t there) Lance Armstrong in my head. They were both famous enough in a sport that their fame exceeds that of the sport itself.
Then it turned out Lance’s fame was held up by the droogs — so maybe that makes him unique, but there’s Barry Bonds and other athletes famous for PEDs.
And for the fall from grace, there’s Tiger Woods, so I don’t think Lance is far enough from the pack.
Audubon seems good — I didn’t know that was someone’s name but of course had definitely heard it.
The real James Bond was an ornithologist.
I should have not posted James Bond so fast; another very widely known ornithologist quickly came to mind: Roger Tory Peterson, of field guide fame.
Greg LeMond is less famous than Armstrong but I think well-enough known to knock out the cyclist category. At least, I’ve heard of him, and I don’t follow cycling.
Audubon is good, unless lots of other people have heard of Sibley. Probably they haven’t. So I think Audubon is a winner!
Lance Armstrong…I dunno, even in America wasn’t Greg LeMonde pretty famous? And the claim doesn’t work worldwide at all: Eddie Merckx, Marco Pantani…just way too many other cyclists were household names in Europe at some point.
Would George Foreman qualify for the grills? Like Jimmy Carter for peanuts, but my guess is George Foreman is probably more known for the grills that boxing.
Or maybe George is too similar to Jared of Subway or Flo of Progressive
Hopefully not TOO similar to Jared of Subway.
Was Louis Armstrong the only world famous jazz musician for a while in the late twenties and early thirties?
Hmm, I think we gotta do the all time comparisons.
Like, how about Julius Caeser and getting killed? I think the age on this one makes it more unique. All the specifics of getting killed in the room are pretty common knowledge — “et tu Brute” and whatnot, but I don’t think any of the political context is that known (I certainly don’t have a clue).
That’s pretty interesting, right? Like he presumably got killed for the political context, but that’s all gone now (well, at least not common knowledge), and the murder keeps chuggin’ along.
Rsm:
There were lots of world famous jazz musicians back then. Jazz was huge!
But who was world famous, first? Paul Whiteman? Sydney Bechet?
At least this guy agrees with me:
《Trumpeter, bandleader and singer Louis Armstrong, ‘Sachmo’, the “Ambassador of Jazz,” became the first internationally known pioneer. 》
https://interlude.hk/musical-giants-20th-century-jazz/
Have you seen Armstrong’s 1932 videos of his foreign tours?
See also https://riverwalkjazz.stanford.edu/?q=program/louis-armstrong-30s-tribute-life-and-music-armstrong-30s
《In the Thirties, Louis Armstrong stepped onto the world stage, as a mainstream artist and entertainer. Crooner Bing Crosby called Louis Armstrong “the beginning and end of music in America.”》
《[In 1929] Armstrong’s genius touched audiences outside the jazz world, and he developed a mainstream following among white fans. 》
If you went outside America and asked about jazz, was Louis Armstrong the only name likely to be mentioned for most, until the mid-thirties perhaps? (Possibly Paul Whiteman, but is there a reason Django Reinhardt bought Armstrong records?)
Bix Beiderbecke
Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter.
Dog, the bounty hunter.
Brian,
Steve Irwin, yes! Famous crocodile hunter, and the only famous crocodile hunter.
The same two occurred to me. But was Steve Irwin actually a crocodile hunter in the same sense as Crocodile Dundee? And does the person have to be non-fictional? If not, Boba Fett is also a famous bounty hunter.
I’m on the fence here. If you emphasize crocodile hunter, then yes Steve Irwin seems pretty unique there. But couldn’t he be considered more of a novelty-nature-based-TV-entertainer?
On the nature-TV side, there’s Bear Grylls (and you can go buy a Bear Grylls knife today so I think that qualifies him as famous enough).
On the novelty-TV side, that was the Dog the bounty hunter thing too.
And though in my head Steve Irwin seems to dwarf Dog (or other novelty acts like Duck Dynasty), I don’t know if that’s true for the kids these days.
But Steve Irwin was not really a crocodile hunter– hew was a zoo director who made nature films. There are lots of famous people who do nature films (David Attenborough of the BBC, etc.), and some others have also been zoo directors (Marlin Perkins of Wild Kingdom fame).
Paul Stamets.
Dale Chihuly.
Matt:
Doesn’t count if I’ve never heard of them.
So maybe since it’s Andrew’s blog the inclusion/exclusion criterion is whether Andrew’s ever heard of others in the category
Well, Paul Stamets gave a TED Talk, I thought that was your definition of famous!
https://www.google.com/search?q=paul+stamets+ted+talk&sxsrf=AOaemvL4SkVoW3jsoWJPgX99UeFasGJCOA%3A1641827440773&source=hp&ei=cEzcYdqOK_ba0PEPrJ-g0AI&iflsig=ALs-wAMAAAAAYdxagHvo8jMWxCmxQMsRT_A-DCfM-iQQ&oq=paul+stam&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAEYBDIECC4QJzIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQguEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDoECCMQJzoICC4QsQMQgwE6CAgAELEDEIMBOg4ILhCABBCxAxDHARDRAzoICAAQgAQQsQM6CwguEIAEELEDEIMBOgsIABCABBCxAxCDAToOCC4QgAQQsQMQxwEQowI6CAguEIAEELEDOgsILhCABBDHARCvAVAAWLgJYOopaABwAHgAgAFniAGZBZIBAzguMZgBAKABAQ&sclient=gws-wiz
I suspect like many folks, I only know who Paul Stamets is because they named the mycologist character on Star Trek: Discovery after him. I would guess that of the population who recognize the name “Paul Stamets”, the vast majority recognize the fictional character and are probably unaware that he is a real person.
Still, an interesting class! The class of people who are less famous than a fictional character named in homage to them. Note that this is distinct from the class of people who are mistaken for a fictionalized version of themselves, because the Paul Stamets character is not based on Paul Stamets the real person, they just share the name and both study mushrooms.
To keep the sci fi theme going, would Alfred Bester count as another member of this class?
> The class of people who are less famous than a fictional character named in homage to them.
Paul Bunyan? (depending on which origin story you go with). Babe his blue ox goes into a different category.
The TV series Hannibal named a murderer after him, which is how I heard of him. A lot of the best second-unit clips from that “Hannibal Without People” video came from that episode.
I think Dale Chihuly is valid.
Darn tootin’! Bunch of book readers around
here. Thanks.
I lived in “Swinging London” in the mid 1960s so I offer up Twiggy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twiggy
and Mary Quant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Quant
but most of all, Mandy Rice-Davies who most of us remember as a key member of the Profumo Affair but later on,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandy_Rice-Davies
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11303169/Mandy-Rice-Davies-obituary.html
“owner of a chain of restaurants in Israel, mastery of Hebrew, writer of “romantic fiction and cookery books,” and
“In 1988 she married, thirdly, Ken Foreman, the chairman of Attwoods waste disposal group. She and her husband led a luxurious and peripatetic life between their houses in Virginia Water, Surrey, Miami and the Bahamas. An occasional holiday companion was Margaret Thatcher late in her life with her husband, Denis, who knew Foreman through business.”
Lord Lloyd-Webber remarked http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11304183/ Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-says-Mandy-Rice-Davies-could-have-run-the-country-but-for-fate-intervening.html that “With a different throw of the dice, Mandy might have been head of the Royal Academy or even running the country.”
Twiggy doesn’t work because The Shrimp:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Shrimpton
Mandy Rice-Davies was also famous for her classic reply “Well he would, wouldn’t he?” in response to Lord Astor’s denial that he had an affair with her.
Obviously, what you see depends on how close you look. Michael Phelps the famous swimmer? What about Don Schollander? Who can forget the photos of Mark Spitz with all those medals? And Lenny Krayzelburg? I did have to look up the spelling of Lenny’s name. I have a friend who likes jazz, and he can name dozens of musicians other than Armstrong. Of course, Gelman is the only statistician I can name unless you count Gauss.
I know a tremendously large number of people who could probably name Thomas Bayes but not anyone else involved in stats (except maybe someone like Nate Silver?). Though their familiarity is mostly cargo cult-y — the idea is to use the language of Bayesian inference to lend a veneer of credibility to what they’d otherwise call “changing one’s mind” or “assumptions”.
What about Bez, the dancer (and maracas player) in the Happy Mondays? Most bands don’t have someone whose main contribution is crazy dancing, and Bez was famous for it.
Jacques Cousteau was a famous oceanographer who publicized his work. Wouldn’t Robert Ballard and perhaps Sylvia Earle fall in that class? (And apologies for perhaps commenting too much on this post, but as a biologist, the Cousteau, Audubon, and Irwin classes struck me as non-singular.)
Jacques Cousteau works for me since he’s a name that absolutely everyone has heard of.
I’m a biologist too (mol. biol.) but haven’t heard of Robert Ballard or Sylvia Earle though I will crank up my Google machine now to investigate
Red Adair, oil well firefighter
Captain Sully, the commercial airline pilot
Captain Sully is very good. Red Adair seems a little niche, but somehow I ended up reading a book about him so maybe he isn’t that niche at all.
John Wayne played Red Adair (in Hellfighters), so he’s not that niche.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellfighters_(film)
Some are hard to classify:
Johnny Appleseed, nurseryman?
Rasputin, influencer? (Although I guess the Kardashians now do that too)
Hellen Keller, disability rights activist? (perhaps just author)
Nostradamus, seer
PT Barnum, showman
Johnny Appleseed is really good.
Rachel Carson
perhaps “first but not unique” doesn’t cut it…
Kj:
Helen Keller’s already on our list, as an object of the class “Pauline Kael.”
What about Arnold Schwarzenegger as a world-famous bodybuilder? He’s famous for multiple things (e.g. see https://i.imgur.com/s3I1XGz.jpg), but I think his broad-spectrum fame as a bodybuilder alone puts him way above folks like Ronnie Coleman, Lee Haney, or Jay Cutler (who isn’t even the most famous Jay Cuter). I doubt any of the other names here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Olympia#Winners are remotely as recognizable as Arnie’s.
If the distinguishing feature of members of the “Jacques Cousteau” class is “regular folk otherwise uninterested some activity think of their name when you mention that activity, but are hard-pressed to name anyone else who engages in it”, then I feel he’d be a pretty good example. Arnie was maybe made most famous by leveraging his bodybuilding chops into an acting career… but then, I feel Tony Hawk is primarily famous nowadays for his eponymous video game series, so. And also the Jimmy Carter example.
Maybe someone like John Muir for hiking? Though I suspect he’s still way too obscure, and too Western. Or Gordon Ramsay for food preparation?
One way to go about this would be to scrape all the entries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hobbies and recursively https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_occupations, check how many people are listed under the “Notable Participants” or “Famous Practitioners” or w/e sections, and then look for outliers in the # of the google search results for $NAME $THING? Or just scan manually through it and see if anything pops out.
Lou Ferrigno? Mostly famous as an actor but the same could be said for Arnold. Also, maybe Jack Lalanne (have to be of a certain age for that one, and not really a bodybuilder per se)?
I’d maybe say the same of Steve Reeves — though I think the popularity waned after their respective superhero shows fell out of favor (and / or were usurped in the present by Mark Ruffalo & Henry Cavill), whereas Arnie has a lot more staying power. Maybe Sean Connery could join their ranks too (if people even know of his participation in Mr. Universe)? also see https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0tc7,%2Fm%2F040ky7,%2Fm%2F04qx9,%2Fm%2F06mr6
Well, I think what makes Arnold kinda special is the breadth of work — the bodybuilding, the acting, and the politic-ing.
The Rock, Tom Brady, Reagan and Trump are at least famous for two careers each, so that reasonably common. Maybe Trump should count for three because he was famous as rich person, then TV, and then politics? And then Arnold is less special.
Yeah, I wasn’t around in the ‘70s (hell, my parents weren’t really around then!) and can’t say if Arnold’s was as household of a name then purely on the merits of his bodybuilding career, before his ‘82 breakthrough in Conan. I agree that search results share information across all sources of fame and are as such poor metric (the peanut-farming president notwithstanding, and not needing to be famous strictly for their “thing”), and it’s hard to disentangle what contributes what, counterfactually. If Arnold never went into acting and politics would he be anywhere near as recognizable today?
Maybe another example could be Wayne Gretzky. Could a decent heuristic for sports people be if your name has ever graced the title of a video game, like the Birdman in the OP? Shaun White could also fit in there.
> Shaun White
Kelly Slater!
Very much the Tony Hawk mold lol.
“What about Arnold Schwarzenegger as a world-famous bodybuilder?”
I think Arnie’s famous more for being Arnie than for any one of his roles. He’s more of a “personality” than a “unique role exemplar”.
Tom Lehrer was a “unique role exemplar”, but that was the (friggin’ amazing at the time, still painfully relevant) lyrics. And I don’t have a good word for what that role should be called.
Bob Dylan for being Bob Dylan.
Eric Clapton for being an only-slightly-overrated god who turned out to be a generic right-wing schmuck.
Yoko Ono for being Yoko Ono.
Yayoi Kusama for being Yayoi Kusama.
Oops. Sorry. I’m playing a different game…
Evel Knievel.
There’s Johnny Knoxville, though Evel Knievel is especially motorcycle-focused and Jackass was more variety.
Richard Branson (airline founder).
Ravi Shankar (sitarist).
Toots Thielemans ? (harmonica player).
Branson wasn’t actually a founder, though he bought in early. So arguably Howard Hughes belongs in the Branson class. There’s also Juan Trippe, who used to be pretty well known.
One thing that really does make Cousteau unique is that he didn’t just do underwater photography, he invented SCUBA (With a collaborator)
Cousteau doesn’t work.
He was famous for his National Geographic nature documentaries, not his underwater photography. There are lots of nature documentary makers and lots of nature documentaries with underwater photography. Would he be famous if he released films of underwater photography with only music? Don’t think so. Mention his name in Shanghai or Cape Town and see what you get.
Never heard of the skateboarder you mentioned. He’s so unfamous all I can remember about his name is “tony-something”. There are gazillions of Tonys. Not famous.
Whether or not someone is “famous” and what they’re famous for is entirely a consequence of what peephole you view the world through.
“Whether or not someone is “famous” and what they’re famous for is entirely a consequence of what peephole you view the world through.”
Sure, but everybody except you has heard of Tony Hawk. If asked whether there are more people alive today who know who Jacques Cousteau is (was), vs Tony Hawk, I’m not sure which way I’d bet.
RE: Tony Hawk
Most people have HEARD of him. But few know him when they see him.
Should that be a qualifier… especially if the category is something visual?
“everybody except you has heard of Tony Hawk. ”
Uh, no, not even close.
Come on, Tony Hawk is somewhere beetween The Beatles and Jesus!
Thor Heyerdahl (rafters)?
jim –
> Whether or not someone is “famous” and what they’re famous for is entirely a consequence of what peephole you view the world through.
Maybe mostly true, but maybe not entirely? Some people will rise above those limitations.
Some 30 years ago, Ali was an example. No first name even needed, although there are obviously a lot of Ali’s running around.
I’d guess there would have been plenty of people all around the world who knew that Ali was a famous boxer, and who couldn’t name even another boxer let alone one nearly as famous as he.
Not many people in that category, however.
“Ali was an example….”
Yeah, that’s a pretty good one. You’re right lots of people would know his name and nothing or no one else related to boxing. But in Africa, China, USSR, India or Indonesia? Sheww…dunno.
The post made me think of this guy, maybe he isn’t famous enough though:
https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/mangetout/
@ Andrew
Are you biased against people who eat airplanes or something? Why doesn’t this get one of your categories?
“a coffin (handles and all)”
And all? Like the contents? The embalmed cadavar? Dude should be famous, then.
I don’t know if it is a euphemism or not.
I learned about him years ago from a VHS I got from a thrift store that showed people “eating weird things”. It only showed him eating parts of the airplane. There was also a guy who gave an interview saying he would eat anything, then the interviewer pointed at the fluorescent light above them and he bit it in half then chomped it all down. Unfortunately someone destroyed the tape when they got upset at one of the scenes.
I did look at his wikipedia and saw this though:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Lotito
Re Carl Sagan, aka BHA within Apple, the amateur astronomer Patrick Moore was world famous in the UK for years before Sagan had even been invented. How much of the world does the person have to be famous in?
At one time Al Capone might have qualified as the only famous gangster, but no longer.
No. When Al Capone was famous, there were lots and lots of famous gangsters. Gangsters were famous then like techbros are today.
Can most people name another renaissance writer other than Shakespeare? He would also probably be the first person that would come to mind when an American is asked to name a British writer from any time period.
If nicknames count, then what about the Red Baron for WWI (or WWII for that matter) fighter pilots? Surely Snoopy has given him a push into popular culture. Also now that he has an airport named after him most Canadians, at least, might know of Billy Bishop.
Cervantes.
But, yeah, maybe the Red Baron is the only famous fighter pilot. I’m not sure if Chuck Yeager counts as famous.
John Thach was a fighter pilot who became widely known for his tactic, “the Thach Weave,” that changed the course of the Pacific Theater in WW2. If you made the cover of Time Magazine would that be enough evidence of fame?
https://web.archive.org/web/20070930213100/http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19580901,00.html
All fighter pilot names would be forgotten by now if not for the Snoopy song!
Chuck Yeager definitely counts as famous, but as a test pilot rather than a fighter pilot. Maybe Chuck Yeager is the only famous test pilot, though. I can’t name another.
Red Baron is no good, though, not even as a WWI fighter pilot: Eddie Rickenbacker is also famous. Not nearly as famous, but famous. So the Red Baron isn’t the only famous WWI fighter pilot.
How about Uri Geller?
also Harry Houdini in a similar vein
unique in their class
Chris:
Houdini and Geller were the most famous magicians of their time, but there were other famous magicians around then too.
awwwww!
anyway… are you saying that Geller was a “magician” and not a psychic/psycokineticist!!
I think Houdini was more famous as an escape artist and did not claim to use magic to do perform them.
So I think he’s in a class by himself. And he is mostly typically referred to by his surname alone, which IMO is an indicator of fame. And we have the slang phrase “pull a Houdini”, which once upon a time, at least, was understood by pretty much everyone in the US at least.
Alex Honnold — rock climber. Though there are probably many people who may not remember his name, but would know his as “the guy in the Free Solo” documentary. An absolutely amazing movie, by the way. (And, though I’m basing this solely on the movie, a fascinating and inspirational person.)
Writing this I realize that being the subject of a documentary is a good way to get into this class, though of course a lot hinges on how popular the documentary is. There’s Paul Pena in the class of American throat singers, which I know only because of the (very good) movie “Genghis Blues.” From Wikipedia, “…which centers on the journey of blind American singer Paul Pena to the isolated Russian Republic of Tuva to pursue his interest in Tuvan throat singing.” I don’t think this is as well known as “Free Solo,” though.
I second the nomination of Ravi Shankar.
All this also reminds me of the card game Anomia, in which one tries to quickly come up with examples of a class, e.g. “Rock operas” . It’s quite fun.
“would know his” -> “would know him”
the documentary stuff reminds me:
what about the guy who tried to make friends with bears and got ate?
Luther Burbank
Mark:
Yes, Luther Burbank! Unless you want to count George Washington Carver in that category too.
My grandfather was apparently a big fan of Luther Burbank, and when my aunt was born he named her Lutheria. She went by Aunt Lucy and never liked it when anyone called her Lutheria. She taught math for awhile at the state prison in Sing Sing.
When we asked who Luther Burbank was, we were always told he was “a famous agriculturalist.” I’ve never heard anyone else described by that title.
I think of Carver as a food scientist and Burbank as a horticulturalist. As for agriculturalists, Carver and Burbank would split the title (depending on how you feel about prog rock (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jethro_Tull_(agriculturist)).
LB has long been one of my goto examples for the pace of change in the late 19th century.
“It was an age of wondrous sights, flying machines, moving pictures, white blackberries…”
https://observationalepidemiology.blogspot.com/2017/09/it-was-age-of-wondrous-sights-flying.html
LB has
Scott Joplin and ragtime? Maybe John Philip Sousa for marches. Eh, I guess they’re both only known in America. Fela Kuti and Afrobeat? Michael Winslow and making funny sounds with your voice?
For baseball fans, James Andrews is the one and only famous orthopedic surgeon. So he’s not famous enough to count on a global scale, but it’s the same kind of flavor.
Daniel:
When I gave a talk in Montreal, I asked my hosts to guess who was the most famous person to have ever lived in Montreal, where “most famous” is defined from the perspective of people from the United States. The answer is Jackie Robinson, and I don’t think anyone else even comes close, but none of my hosts guessed it.
Especially after that last space flight, I would think William Shatner gets close.
There may be a certain US age cohort in which Celine Dion is more famous! Not everybody likes baseball, after all. Google Trends suggests Dion has had more searches for most of the last two decades.
Anyway, I came into this thread because I was like “Michael Winslow, nobody will have thought of that” but your commenters have outfoxed me once again.
There is another age cohort in which Grimes – X Æ A-Xii‘s mom – is even more famous.
I suspect that Kamala Harris may be “more famous” than Jackie Robinson even from the perspective of people from the United States.
Carlos:
I gave that talk a few years ago, when then-Senator Harris was not so world famous!
You should have said “I don’t think anyone else even came close” in that case!
I considered “pitchers known for hitting home runs”, but Ruth was only a pitcher for a few years
Shohei.
“Maybe John Philip Sousa for marches. Eh, I guess they’re both only known in America.”
And by Monty Python fans.
Sigh…Andrew is of course right about Shohei, and suddenly I feel old (also watching more international cricket)
Frankenstein: object of the class of commonly misidentified fictional characters; his monster usually gets the moniker.
Paul:
I think Frankenstein is an example of objects of the class “Sherlock Holmes”: cultural products that are well remembered but systematically misremembered.
Lysenko ?
Temüjin? Or is, say Timur or Attila ‘of the class Genghis Khan’
I always love this game.
In this category, if you have to name the category, you’ve lost, but I’ll provide descriptions anyway. In more or less descending order of goodness:
Amelia Earhart [aviatrix]
Diana Spencer [Princess of Wales]
Benedict Arnold [traitor — there are of course plenty of earlier and later, and bigger traitors, but none come close to Arnold; maybe Judas, but betrayer is different than traitor]
Ruth Westheimer [sex therapist]
Abigail van Buren [advice columnist — her sister is a very minor problem here]
Johnny Weismuller [Tarzan, even though there were lots of others]
Et tu, Brute?
I don’t know who is Ruth Westheimer but the “sex therapists” category brings Masters and Johnson to my mind. (I didn’t know Benedict Arnold either. Nor Abigail van Buren. I’m not sure they are as “world-famous” as the others.)
Re: Princesses of Wales, a lot of people may know that Camilla Parker Bowles is the current one – even though she doesn’t use the title.
Catherine of Aragon also was Princess of Wales briefly – until the death of her husband. She’ll become Queen years later when he married her brother-in-law, Henry VIII.
I think of Masters and Johnson as researchers, not therapists. And Brutus as a betrayer, not a traitor. But I grant both are borderline.
On Princesses of Wales, I definitely don’t count Camilla, and if Catherine of Aragon is the best you can do, I’ll stick with Diana.
I was unaware of the parochiality for Dr. Ruth, Benedict Arnold and Dear Abby, but all three are big here in the US, even though the last two are long-dead.
Nobody can touch Amelia.
Jonathan:
I just don’t count “aviatrix” as a category. She’s a pilot so I’ll compare her to other pilots, not just to other lady pilots.
Looking up “traitor” in dictionaries we find things like
A person who betrays someone or something, such as a friend, cause, or principle.
and
1 : one who betrays another’s trust or is false to an obligation or duty
2 : one who commits treason
The former entry and the first definition in the latter are about betrayal.
Even if you want to make it about “treason” – the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign’s family – Julius Caesar ‘s assassination seems to fit the bill.
[Interestingly, the aforementioned Henry VIII had his second wife famously beheaded for treason. And his fifth wife as well, but not as famously.]
OK. I’ll give up on Benedict Arnold. And Andrew notwithstanding, if they have a separate word for it (aviatrix) it’s a separate thing. If the Oscars give awards to actresses, then I count aviatrices separately.
OK, here’s another one. W. E. B. DuBois is the world’s most famous sociologist . . . and he’s the only famous sociologist. That is, the only sociologist who’s famous to non-academics.
The only tricky thing here is that, yes, DuBois is famous and, yes, he’s a sociologist, but I’d guess that he’s more famous for being a political activist than for being a sociologist.
I guess Margaret Mead might still be the only truly famous anthropologist.
Leaky (paleoanthropologist)
Louis, Mary or Richard?
Leakey
Yeah, that one really doesn’t hold water.
Ha Ha!
Weber, just as famous at the time.
Durkheim was famous, too.
Philippe Petit, most famous tightrope artist . . . only famous tightrope artist.
Karl Wallenda
Wallenda’s only famous for being called Amazing; nobody knows exactly what he does. Everyone knows that Petit did tightrope.
Nah I’m afraid Wallenda is indeed a famous tightrope walker. Too bad because it’s just him and Petit but they ruin it for each other.
Damn! It’s Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey all over again.
A couple that have not been mentioned. 1. Jane Addams, most famous social worker ever (one of the most famous American women during her lifetime). Only famous social worker. 2. Marco Polo. He was famous for traveling the Silk Road, and the only famous European for traveling the Silk Road. (Don’t put hm in the category of explorers. He just travelled a route that was already there.) 3. Mata Hari, only famous exotic dancer/spy. Maybe the only famous exotic dancer.
Steve:
Somehow this makes me think of some category of people who are just flat-out unique, nobody else out there is like them. Some examples would include Margaret Mead, Abraham Lincoln, and Andy Warhol. There were lots of conceptual artists, but there was only one Andy Warhol.
I’m excluding people who are unique because of their historical circumstances. For example, there could only ever have been one person in the position of Mao, but I feel that there are a fair number of historical figures who’ve had the ability and inclination to work their way up to controlling a revolutionary organization, maintain control by all means necessary, etc.
Martin Gardner! He’s another sui generis.
Andrew –
> but there was only one Andy Warhol
Not sure how he’d be distinct from Duchamp
Florence Nightingale
Mother Teresa
Chris:
Mother Teresa is not unique. She’s in a category of two, along with Henry Kissinger, of “famous people who were criticized by Christopher Hitchens.”
And Hitchens is far from unique, as there are a zillion people in the “cranky political columnist” category.
I think Blackbeard is probably the most famous historical pirate, but not sure if he is the only world-famous pirate?
Also, I suspect this doesn’t count for your purposes since there isn’t a single person, but I suggest that Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay are the only world-famous mountain climbers (who happen to come as an inseparable pair).
This probably doesn’t count either since it’s not a person, but I would say the Hindenburg is the only world-famous airship (unless you count the Goodyear blimp over its entire history as a single entity, perhaps).
1. Captain Kidd.
2. The guy in Free Solo.
3. Interesting idea to generalize to objects.
Florence Nightingale (another world famous nurse?)
Greta Thunberg (another world famous environmentalist, maybe Nader?)
Ugh…Googled.
1) Clara Barton
2) Rachel Carson, John Muir.
Florence N. is the only famous nurse/statistician but maybe that’s too specialized a category to count. Then you’d have to include people like Richard Feynman, the only famous physicist/bongo player, etc.
I was going to day Tokyo Rose, but then I Googled and found out Tokyo Rose wasn’t just one individual.
Google sure messes this up.
Virtually none of the people mentioned here have world-wide name recognition. They’d be known exclusively in the west, mostly in the US.
But here’s one. I don’t need to say the name: Most prolific mass murderer in human history (also usually known by a single name).
Jim:
1. Yeah, I recognize that name recognition is not universal, and all the discussion is implicitly from a perspective of people kinda like me!
2. There are many famous mass murderers so that won’t work. We’re talking here about people who are the only really famous one in their category.
And I’m not sure Ben sure whether we’re talking about Hitler or Stalin or Atilla.
Phil:
I’m guessing Mao based on pure numbers, but in any case there are multiple candidates here.
Mao is the Peoples’s Choice (as it were) but I’ve never thought the accounting was done right. You see numbers like 45 million dead, which is accurate, but that includes deaths from famine and disease that were brought on by Mao’s policies. I think the number actually murdered was much much lower, like one or two million. One could argue that it’s a distinction without a difference but I don’t think so: one of the key characteristics of murder is that you do it on purpose.
I really don’t think there are any serious contenders for this title except one.
Mao: As Phil points out, millions of people died as a result of his incompetent leadership, but how many people did he expressly set out to kill?
Atilla: during Attila’s time the population of Europe was equal to the population of Luxembourg today (exaggeration for effect).
Stalin: “Historian and archival researcher Stephen G. Wheatcroft and Michael Ellman attribute roughly 3 million deaths to the Stalinist regime, including executions and deaths from criminal negligence” (wikipedia)
The closest contender is Stalin, but with 3M deaths – but many attributed to “criminal negligence” – he’s at less than half the total of our most famous killer. Yet even given the benefit of the doubt, Stalin is a week contender, having carried out his campaign of terror over 30 years as opposed to our famous killer’s 5-6 years, and having a more occasional and capricious approach to his killing than our famous murderer, who’s systematic approach supposedly even generated new data management innovations.
I initially posted this kind of on a hunch, but the more I read the clearer it gets – and the more disgusting and gruesome it gets so I think I’ve had enough.
Evil Knievel is the only daredevil I know, but I don’t think his fame was global. One can’t count Fonzie jumping the shark, because that was fictional.
Bob:
I think Evel Knievel is just fine, and it’s not necessary for someone in this category to be famous outside the U.S. . . . . Ummmm, I see that in my above post, I included “world famous” in the definition. I guess I meant “world famous in the U.S.”
Evel Knievel is just one blockbuster biopic away from being world famous.
Alan Turing. How many people who an name him can name another code-breaker?
Temple Grandin. How many people who can name her can name another slaughterhouse designer?
I feel like Patty Hearst belongs but it’s hard to define the class. Not “kidnap victim “ of course, but something.
Lindbergh baby could maybe be “infant kidnap victims.” Can you name another?
E.O. Wilson (Ant Man*) (1929-12/26/2021, r.i.p.)
Noam Chomsky (Linguist)
*Makes him sound like he’s part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but nobody would recognize the word myrmecologist, including myself…I had to rely on Wikipedia**.
**Which makes him a good candidate for an entirely different category: people who are much more famous than their occupations.
Alan Lomax (recording folk music)?
Stradivarius seems like a good example. Somehow too good of an example maybe? Like too identified with the thing he’s famous for?
Oh, Jim Henson!
This game is making it hard to fall asleep…
Frederick Law Olmsted
Daniel:
I don’t know if Alan Lomax was even the most famous Lomax who recorded folk music!
But, yeah, Stradivarius is a world-famous designer of musical instruments, and pretty much the only famous designer of musical instruments.
Maybe Sax works too—the world-famous inventor of a musical instrument . . . oh, no, he and Theramin knock each other out.
James Naismith, world-famous (at least in North America) inventor of a sport, and only famous inventor of a sport.
Oscar Pistorius, world-famous paralympic runner, and only famous paralympic runner.
Too bad there aren’t any world-famous jugglers. If there were, he or she would be the only one!
I think Naismith takes a back seat to Abner Doubleday and Doubleday didn’t even invent baseball! I’m sticking with Amelia Earhart.
And Sax isn’t close. What about Moog, for example? Or Sousa?
Sousa is good! I happen to be able to name one other composer of marches (Middendorf), but only because an acquaintance ghost-wrote some of his marches. I think Sousa is the only famous march composer.
I meant as the inventor of the Sousaphone. As a writer of march music, he’s fine, although there aren’t a lot of creators of march music, which waters him down a bit in this category.
Jonathan:
No on Amelia Earhart. There are other famous pilots, even of that era, like Charles Lindbergh. Or Wiley Post, if we want to restrict the category to famous pilots who died in a crash.
Les Paul
World famous jugglers:
Kris Kremo.
Sergej Ignatov.
Vova and Olga** Galchenko* (who retired from juggling to study computer science).
Penn Jillette.
*: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4RAx9BWc-w&ab_channel=victorbaldal
(You want to watch this until the end: seven clubs between two people (with simple tricks) is something even I’ve done. Everything else in there is superhuman.)
**: Olga once said in an interview: never perform a trick in public that you can’t perform 30 times without dropping in practice.
Miles Davis for modern jazz.
David:
Interesting that you mention Miles Davis, as we just saw Ascenseur pour l’Échafaud, which has a justly celebrated Miles Davis score. And, indeed, I came up with the idea for this post when watching one of the special features on the DVD; it was a fun interview with Louis Malle from the 1970s where he talked about, among other things, his experience filming for Jacques Cousteau early in his career. This made me think: “Cousteau is really famous. Are there any other famous undersea photographers?” And the rest is history.
> only famous designer of musical instruments
Steinway (and sons).
Yes, the category has to be narrower. Only famous designer of violins.
Although…I dunno, what about Guarnieri? He’s famous enough that I’ve heard of him.
I don’t think Andrew made it explicit but I think the implicit standard is: if you were to ask every American to name some members of a given profession, what’s the ratio of (people who can only name a single one — and it’s the same one) to (people who name at least one person other than this one). I dunno what ratio we’re looking for, maybe 20:1 or something? In that case Stradivarius is in, I think.
(Antonio) Stradivari (as the person’s name). A Stradivarius is for one of the instruments.
Emma Goldman, only famous american anarchist?
Dr Demento
Weird Al Yankovich
Neil Armstrong.
He’s the most famous astronaut and the most famous person to have walked on the moon, but he’s not the ONLY famous astronaut or the ONLY famous person to have walked on the moon. So, nope.
David Attenborough is the contemporary Cousteau and has been for two or three decades.
“Nate Silver, world-famous statistician. And there are no other famous statisticians.”
I suspect Silver (and to an even greater extent Bill James) is only really famous in the US, or for people interested in US politics. I have the strong impression that if I were to ask around here (Ireland), very few would recognise him. The only reason *I* know who he is is because I happen to be a statistician myself. I imagine David Spiegelhalter would be considered more famous in these neck of the woods.
Spiegelhalter is a bit niche for non-statisticians: even in the UK. Maybe Hans Rosling for _those_ TED talks. Or Duckworth-Lewis, albeit without the recognition that they’re statisticians.
And Ireland isn’t in the UK. Mea Culpa. I didn’t read closely enough. Sorry
No that’s alright. Actually when I said “these neck of the woods” I was including the UK (though you are right to assume some in Ireland would be offended by that).
Stradivarius? Only famous violin maker.
Guarnieri?
Depends on what ratio of (fame of the most famous):(fame of the next-most-famous) we require.
Anna Wintour. I could Google another fashion magazine editor, but I can’t think of any without search engine help.
Björk. Named Icelandic people. I know there’s the strongman in Game of Thrones, but he’s just called the “Icelandic Strongman in Game of Thrones” or “The Mountain”
Similar geographic one: Freddie Mercury as (I think) famously the only person from Zanzibar.
Jane Jacobs. If urban theory from non-architect/builder is a category.
John Harrison. Clockmaker. If he’s famous in the US.
Harrison is known in the U.S. mostly through Sobel’s book “Longitude”. But for many in the small fraction of people who think of him as famous, I think Elgin would also be considered famous (in the sense that the ratio of (people who can name Harrison):(people who can name Elgin) would be maybe in the single digits or low double digits. I’m only guessing though.
That’s fair. Clockmaker feels like a category where you’d know either zero or more than one.
And Ireland isn’t in the UK. Mea Culpa. I didn’t read closely enough. Sorry
Homer (of Odyssey/Iliad fame, not the Simpson).
What’s the category?
I was thinking “blind poet orators”. In that case, he’s really in a class by himself. This wouldn’t work if, e.g., the category was just “ancient poets”. Then you’d get Virgil and probably some others I’m too illiterate to think of.
Though this did make me think of another: Omar Khayyam. How many other Rubaiyat-ers can you name?
Gec:
Also we’re talking about real people, not mythical characters.
Homer may have existed. Scholars aren’t sure.
Less likely to be real than Jesus, more likely to be real than Moses: would that be a fair assessment?
Mel Blanc? I can’t think of any other famous voice actors. There are famous actors who sometimes do voice work, but they are not famous for their voice work.
Also maybe Edith Head, famous as a costume designer
Julie Kavner. Everyone knows that scratchy voice.
People know the voice, but do they know the name? Plus, she won an Emmy for Rhoda years before The Simpsons, so she is more an actress who does voice work (and really for only one show, according to her Wikipedia filmography). Also, she was presumably cast for her acting ability. Blanc was paid for his ability to do different voices, and played scores of characters.
Gdanning:
Well, Kavner doesn’t just do Marge. She also does Patty and Selma.
Nate Silver? Nah. Statistics is too obscure and boring to have famous practioners.
Timothy Leary
Ms. O’Leary? For the cow? But the cow part was apparently made up, so then maybe it doesn’t count.
On the other hand, Mrs. O’Leary’s cow is probably the only actual cow most people can identify. I think being the only notable member of your entire species beats all. Alas, it probably wasn’t even her cow that didn’t start the fire.
John:
This connects to another one of our posts, Where are the famous dogs? Where are the famous animals?. You’ll be happy that Mrs. O’Leary’s cow is on the list.