Cao Xueqin
c. 1715 – 1763 · 48 years · Beijing · Asia
Author of Dream of the Red Chamber, one of China's Four Great Classical Novels and the summit of its prose fiction.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 18th century
Portrait: User:Yongxinge · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Voltaire — French Enlightenment writer, 21 years older
- Johann Sebastian Bach — German composer and organist, 30 years older
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — German poet and thinker, 34 years younger
- Isaac Newton — English physicist and mathematician, 72 years older
- Carl Linnaeus — Swedish naturalist, 8 years older
- Louis XV — king under whom France lost Canada, 5 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Mikhail Lomonosov — Russian polymath, 4 years older
- Catherine the Great — Empress of Russia, 14 years younger
- Peter the Great — first Emperor of Russia, 43 years older
- Leonhard Euler — Swiss mathematician, 8 years older
- Elizabeth — empress who founded Moscow University, 6 years older
- Peter III — emperor who freed the nobility from compulsory service, 13 years younger
Middle East
- Nader Shah — Shah of Iran and conqueror, 27 years older
- Ahmed III — sultan of the 'Tulip Era', 42 years older
- Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab — Islamic religious reformer, 12 years older
- Mustafa III — sultan who lost the war to Catherine II, 2 years younger
- Osman III — sultan who spent 50 years in the 'cage', 16 years older
- Mahmud I — sultan who regained Belgrade by the 1739 peace, 19 years older
Africa
- Moulay Ismail — Sultan of Morocco, 70 years older
Asia
- Qianlong Emperor — Qing emperor of China, 4 years older
- Tokugawa Yoshimune — reforming shogun who allowed Western books, 31 years older
- Tipu Sultan — ruler of Mysore, 36 years younger
- Tokugawa Ieshige — ailing shogun whose speech only one courtier understood, 3 years older
- Tokugawa Ieharu — shogun of the Tanuma era and the Tenmei famine, 22 years younger
Americas
- Benjamin Franklin — American scientist and statesman, 9 years older
- George Washington — first President of the United States, 17 years younger
- Túpac Amaru II — leader of an Andean uprising, 23 years younger
- Thomas Jefferson — third President of the United States, 28 years younger
- Toussaint Louverture — leader of the Haitian Revolution, 28 years younger
- Aleijadinho — Brazilian sculptor and architect, 15 years younger
Oceania
- James Cook — British navigator, 13 years younger
- Tupaia — Tahitian navigator and priest, 10 years younger
- Arthur Phillip — first Governor of New South Wales, 23 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1721 Proclamation of the Russian Empire — aged 6, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1747 Ahmad Shah Durrani founds the Afghan state — aged 32, Middle East
- 1755 Lisbon earthquake — aged 40, Europe
- 1756–1763 Seven Years' War — aged 41, Europe
- 1757 Battle of Plassey — aged 42, Asia
- c. 1760 Start of the Industrial Revolution — aged 45, Europe
- 1762 Accession of Catherine the Great — aged 47, Eastern Europe & Russia