Al-Biruni
c. 973 – 1048 · 75 years · Ghazni · Asia
Khwarazmian polymath who measured the Earth's radius and wrote a monumental study of India.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 10th century
Portrait: Michel Bakni · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Edward the Confessor — pious king who built Westminster Abbey, 30 years younger
- Æthelred the Unready — king who paid off the Vikings with Danegeld, 7 years older
- Cnut the Great — Danish king who ruled a North Sea empire, 22 years younger
- Hugh Capet — founder of the Capetian dynasty, 33 years older
- William the Conqueror — Duke of Normandy, King of England, 55 years younger
- Robert II the Pious — pious king excommunicated for marrying a kinswoman, 1 year older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Vladimir the Great — Grand Prince of Kiev, 13 years older
- Yaroslav the Wise — Grand Prince of Kiev, 5 years younger
- Sviatopolk the Accursed — prince of Kiev blamed by the chronicles for murdering Boris and Gleb, 7 years younger
- Iziaslav I — prince of Kiev twice driven from his capital, 51 years younger
- Vsevolod I — prince of Kiev, father of Vladimir Monomakh, 57 years younger
Middle East
- Avicenna (Ibn Sina) — physician and philosopher, 7 years younger
- Ferdowsi — Persian poet, 33 years older
Asia
- Murasaki Shikibu — novelist, author of The Tale of Genji, born the same year
- Sei Shōnagon — writer and court lady, 7 years older
- Shen Kuo — polymath, 58 years younger
Americas
- Leif Erikson — Norse explorer, 3 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 988 Christianization of Kievan Rus' — aged 15, Eastern Europe & Russia
- c. 1000 Extinction of the elephant birds — aged 27, Africa
- c. 1000 Stephen I, first king of Hungary — aged 27, Europe
- 1006 Supernova SN 1006 — aged 33, Africa
- c. 1010 The Tale of Genji — aged 37, Asia
- 1021 Norse in North America — aged 48, Americas
- 1025 Avicenna's Canon of Medicine — aged 52, Middle East
- c. 1037 Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kiev — aged 64, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1044 First gunpowder formulas in the Wujing Zongyao — aged 71, Asia