Andrei Sakharov
1921 – 1989 · 68 years · Moscow · Eastern Europe & Russia
Nuclear physicist who helped build the Soviet hydrogen bomb, later a human rights advocate and 1975 Nobel Peace laureate.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Vladimir Fedorenko / Владимир Федоренко · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 40 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 47 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 42 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 32 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 54 years older
- Elizabeth II — Britain's longest-reigning monarch, on the throne for 70 years, 5 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 13 years younger
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 43 years older
- Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 15 years older
- Mikhail Gorbachev — last leader of the Soviet Union, 10 years younger
- Boris Yeltsin — first President of Russia, 10 years younger
- Dmitri Shostakovich — composer, 15 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 40 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 23 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 3 years older
- Naguib Mahfouz — novelist, Nobel laureate, 10 years older
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 23 years older
- Nâzım Hikmet — poet, 19 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 3 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 29 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 4 years younger
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 15 years older
- Julius Nyerere — first president of Tanzania, 1 year younger
- Chinua Achebe — novelist, 9 years younger
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 28 years older
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 52 years older
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 20 years older
- Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 11 years older
- Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India, 4 years older
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 20 years older
Americas
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 9 years younger
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 32 years older
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 8 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 65 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 74 years older
- Ronald Reagan — 40th US president, "Reaganomics" and the end of the Cold War, 10 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 50 years older
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 2 years older
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 15 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 23 years older
- Don Bradman — cricketer, 13 years older
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 21 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1922 Formation of the USSR — aged 1, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1922 March on Rome: Mussolini takes power — aged 1, Europe
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — aged 1, Africa
- 1923 Great Kantō earthquake — aged 2, Asia
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 7, Europe
- 1928–1932 First Five-Year Plan: Soviet industrialisation — aged 7, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 8, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 8, Eastern Europe & Russia
- c. 1930–1936 Dust Bowl — aged 9, Americas
- 1931 China floods — aged 10, Asia
- 1932–1933 Soviet famine of 1930–1933 — aged 11, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — aged 11, Middle East
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 12, Europe
- 1934–1935 Long March — aged 13, Asia
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — aged 14, Africa
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 15, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 15, Europe
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — aged 15, Oceania
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 18, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 20, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 20, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 21, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 24, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 24, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 26, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 27, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 28, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 32, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 32, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 36, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 40, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1969 Moon landing — aged 48, Americas
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 49, Americas
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 54, Asia
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — aged 59, Whole world
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — aged 62, Americas
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — aged 64, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — aged 68, Europe
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — aged 68, Europe
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — aged 68, Eastern Europe & Russia