Akira Kurosawa
1910 – 1998 · 88 years · Tokyo · Asia
Japanese director of Rashomon, Seven Samurai and Dersu Uzala, the last made in the Soviet Union.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: 映画の友 (Eiga no tomo) · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 29 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 36 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 31 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 21 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 43 years older
- Elizabeth II — Britain's longest-reigning monarch, on the throne for 70 years, 16 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 32 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 24 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 40 years older
- Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 4 years older
- Mikhail Gorbachev — last leader of the Soviet Union, 21 years younger
- Boris Yeltsin — first President of Russia, 21 years younger
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 29 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 12 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 8 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 49 years older
- Naguib Mahfouz — novelist, Nobel laureate, 1 year younger
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 12 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 8 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 18 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 15 years younger
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 4 years older
- Julius Nyerere — first president of Tanzania, 12 years younger
- Chinua Achebe — novelist, 20 years younger
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 17 years older
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 41 years older
- Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, born the same year
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 9 years older
- Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India, 7 years younger
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 9 years older
Americas
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 20 years younger
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 21 years older
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 19 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 54 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 63 years older
- Ronald Reagan — 40th US president, "Reaganomics" and the end of the Cold War, 1 year younger
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 39 years older
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 9 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 12 years older
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 26 years younger
- Don Bradman — cricketer, 2 years older
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 10 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution — aged 0, Americas
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — aged 1, Asia
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — aged 1, Oceania
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 4, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 4, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 5, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 6, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 7, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 7, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 8, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 9, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 18, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 19, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 19, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 23, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 26, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 26, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 29, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 31, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 31, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 32, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 35, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 35, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 37, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 38, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 39, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 43, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 43, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 47, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 51, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1969 Moon landing — aged 59, Americas
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 60, Americas
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 65, Asia
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — aged 70, Whole world
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — aged 73, Americas
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — aged 75, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — aged 79, Europe
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — aged 79, Europe
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — aged 79, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — aged 81, Eastern Europe & Russia