Albert Camus
1913 – 1960 · 47 years · Paris · Europe
Philosophy: Existentialism
Born in Algeria. Author of The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus: the world is absurd, yet one can live in it honestly and revolt against meaninglessness. Nobel Prize in Literature, 1957.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Photograph by United Press International · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 39 years older
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 32 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 34 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 24 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 46 years older
- Bertrand Russell — British philosopher, logician and public intellectual, 41 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 35 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 21 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 43 years older
- Anna Akhmatova — poet, 24 years older
- Nikita Khrushchev — Soviet leader who denounced Stalin's personality cult, 19 years older
- Dmitri Shostakovich — composer, 7 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 32 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 15 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 5 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 52 years older
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 15 years older
- Nâzım Hikmet — poet, 11 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 5 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 21 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 12 years younger
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 38 years older
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 7 years older
- Kwame Nkrumah — first President of Ghana, 4 years older
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 20 years older
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 44 years older
- Jawaharlal Nehru — first Prime Minister of India, 24 years older
- Ho Chi Minh — President of North Vietnam, 23 years older
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 12 years older
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 12 years older
Americas
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 24 years older
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 16 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 57 years older
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 17 years younger
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 66 years older
- Harry S. Truman — 33rd US president, the atomic bombs and the start of the Cold War, 29 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 42 years older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 15 years older
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 6 years younger
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 23 years younger
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 13 years older
- Don Bradman — cricketer, 5 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1913 Ford's moving assembly line — aged 0, Americas
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 1, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 1, Americas
- 1914 Death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon — aged 1, Americas
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 2, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 3, Middle East
- 1916–1918 The Arab Revolt — aged 3, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 4, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 4, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917 February Revolution — aged 4, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917 Balfour Declaration — aged 4, Middle East
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 5, Whole world
- 1918 Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes — aged 5, Europe
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 6, Europe
- 1920 League of Nations founded — aged 7, Whole world
- 1922 Formation of the USSR — aged 9, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1922 March on Rome: Mussolini takes power — aged 9, Europe
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — aged 9, Africa
- 1923 Great Kantō earthquake — aged 10, Asia
- 1923 Treaty of Lausanne — aged 10, Middle East
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 15, Europe
- 1928–1932 First Five-Year Plan: Soviet industrialisation — aged 15, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 16, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 16, Eastern Europe & Russia
- c. 1930–1936 Dust Bowl — aged 17, Americas
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 20, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 23, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 23, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 26, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 28, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 28, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 29, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 32, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 32, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 34, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 35, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 36, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 40, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 40, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 44, Eastern Europe & Russia