Charles Darwin
1809 – 1882 · 73 years · Downe, Kent · Europe
Sailed around the world on HMS Beagle; in On the Origin of Species (1859) he set out evolution by natural selection.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Herbert Rose Barraud · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Karl Marx — philosopher and economist, 9 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 10 years younger
- Vincent van Gogh — painter, 44 years younger
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — German poet and thinker, 60 years older
- Ludwig van Beethoven — German composer, 39 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 58 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 12 years younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 19 years younger
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 25 years younger
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 31 years younger
- Alexander Pushkin — Russian poet, 10 years older
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 61 years younger
Middle East
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 33 years younger
- Abdulmejid I — sultan of the Tanzimat reforms, 14 years younger
- Mahmud II — sultan who destroyed the Janissaries, 24 years older
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 52 years younger
- Abdulaziz — first sultan to visit Western Europe, 21 years younger
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 35 years younger
Africa
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 4 years younger
- Muhammad Ali of Egypt — ruler of Egypt, 40 years older
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 35 years younger
- Shaka — King of the Zulu, 22 years older
- Moshoeshoe I — founder of Lesotho, 23 years older
- Samori Ture — founder of the Wassoulou Empire, 19 years younger
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 60 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 28 years younger
- Katsushika Hokusai — Japanese artist, 49 years older
- Tokugawa Ienari — longest-serving shogun, for half a century, 36 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 43 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 52 years younger
Americas
- Abraham Lincoln — 16th President of the United States, born the same year
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 38 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 47 years younger
- Simón Bolívar — liberator of South America, 26 years older
- Benito Juárez — President of Mexico, 3 years older
- Ulysses S. Grant — 18th US president, commanding general of the Union Army, 13 years younger
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 62 years younger
- Kamehameha I — first King of Hawaii, 51 years older
- Henry Parkes — Premier of New South Wales, 'Father of Federation', 6 years younger
- Truganini — Aboriginal Tasmanian woman, 3 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 29 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 38 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1810–1826 Spanish American wars of independence — aged 1, Americas
- 1812 Napoleon's invasion of Russia — aged 3, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1814–1815 Congress of Vienna — aged 5, Europe
- 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora — aged 6, Asia
- 1815 Battle of Waterloo — aged 6, Europe
- 1816 Year Without a Summer — aged 7, Europe
- 1817–1824 First cholera pandemic — aged 8, Asia
- 1817 San Martín's Crossing of the Andes — aged 8, Americas
- 1819 Raffles founds modern Singapore — aged 10, Asia
- 1822 Independence of Brazil — aged 13, Americas
- 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay — aged 19, Middle East
- c. 1831 Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa — aged 22, Asia
- 1833 Abolition of slavery in the British Empire — aged 24, Europe
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek — aged 26, Africa
- 1835 Darwin in the Galápagos — aged 26, Americas
- 1838–1839 Trail of Tears — aged 29, Americas
- 1839–1842 First Opium War — aged 30, Asia
- 1839 Birth of photography: the daguerreotype — aged 30, Europe
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — aged 30, Middle East
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — aged 30, Middle East
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — aged 36, Europe
- 1846 First public demonstration of ether anaesthesia — aged 37, Americas
- 1846–1848 Mexican–American War — aged 37, Americas
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — aged 38, Africa
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — aged 39, Europe
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto — aged 39, Europe
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — aged 42, Oceania
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — aged 44, Asia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — aged 44, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — aged 50, Europe
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 52, Europe
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — aged 52, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — aged 52, Americas
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — aged 54, Americas
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — aged 55, Americas
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — aged 58, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1867 Canadian Confederation — aged 58, Americas
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — aged 59, Asia
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 67, Americas
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 70, Americas