Charles Sanders Peirce
1839 – 1914 · 75 years · Cambridge, Massachusetts · Americas
Philosophy: Pragmatism (founder)
Founder of pragmatism: the meaning of an idea lies in its practical consequences. He worked for thirty years for the US Coast Survey and laid the foundations of semiotics, the study of signs.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Napoleon Sarony · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 20 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 28 years younger
- Karl Marx — philosopher and economist, 21 years older
- Charles Darwin — naturalist, author of evolutionary theory, 30 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 35 years younger
- Vincent van Gogh — painter, 14 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 11 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 5 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 1 year younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 31 years younger
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 18 years older
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 39 years younger
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 42 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 3 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 22 years younger
- Abdulmejid I — sultan of the Tanzimat reforms, 16 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 59 years younger
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 5 years younger
Africa
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 5 years younger
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 26 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 53 years younger
- Muhammad Ali of Egypt — ruler of Egypt, 70 years older
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 1 year younger
- Taytu Betul — Empress of Ethiopia, 12 years younger
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 30 years younger
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 54 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 2 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 13 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 22 years younger
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 27 years younger
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 8 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 17 years younger
- Abraham Lincoln — 16th President of the United States, 30 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 50 years younger
- Mark Twain — writer and humorist, 4 years older
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 8 years younger
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 32 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 59 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 1 year older
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 8 years younger
- Henry Parkes — Premier of New South Wales, 'Father of Federation', 24 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 22 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1839–1842 First Opium War — aged 0, Asia
- 1839 Birth of photography: the daguerreotype — aged 0, Europe
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — aged 0, Middle East
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — aged 0, Middle East
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — aged 6, Europe
- 1846 First public demonstration of ether anaesthesia — aged 7, Americas
- 1846–1848 Mexican–American War — aged 7, Americas
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — aged 8, Africa
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — aged 9, Europe
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto — aged 9, Europe
- 1850–1864 Taiping Rebellion — aged 11, Asia
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — aged 12, Oceania
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — aged 14, Asia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — aged 14, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — aged 20, Europe
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 22, Europe
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — aged 22, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — aged 22, Americas
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — aged 24, Americas
- 1864 End of the Caucasian War and the Circassian expulsion — aged 25, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — aged 25, Americas
- 1865 Assassination of Abraham Lincoln — aged 26, Americas
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — aged 28, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1867 Canadian Confederation — aged 28, Americas
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — aged 29, Asia
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — aged 30, Africa
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — aged 30, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1869 First transcontinental railroad — aged 30, Americas
- 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War — aged 31, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 37, Americas
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 40, Americas
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 44, Asia
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 46, Asia
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 47, Europe
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 50, Europe
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 54, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 66, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 69, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 75, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 75, Americas