Follow Business Insider: You've seen Google's annual lists of trendy search terms, featuring things like  robin williams, world cup, and ebola , but those show only the most unusually popular terms, not the most popular terms overall.
Murasaki Shikibu is the best known writer to emerge from Japan's glorious Heian period. Her novel, The Tale of Genji (Genji-monogatari) is considered to be one of the world's finest and earliest novels. Some argue that Murasaki is the world's first modern novelist.
Francois Pierre La Varenne is in many ways the godfather of modern French cuisine, and was the author of what is considered by many chefs and historians to be the first true French cookbook. His work is much responsible for the creation of haute cuisine as we know it today. The concept of haute cuisine.