Claude Lévi-Strauss

UNESCO/Michel Ravassard · CC BY 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

French anthropologist

1908 – 2009 · 101 years · Paris · Europe

Applied structural linguistics to myths, kinship and customs: behind their diversity he looked for universal structures of the human mind. In the 1930s he studied Indigenous peoples of Brazil.

Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century

Portrait: UNESCO/Michel Ravassard · CC BY 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Contemporaries around the world

Europe

Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 27 years older
Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 34 years older
Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 29 years older
Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 19 years older
Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 41 years older
Elizabeth II — Britain's longest-reigning monarch, on the throne for 70 years, 18 years younger

Eastern Europe & Russia

Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 30 years older
Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 26 years younger
Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 38 years older
Mikhail Gorbachev — last leader of the Soviet Union, 23 years younger
Boris Yeltsin — first President of Russia, 23 years younger
Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 2 years older

Middle East

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 27 years older
Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 10 years older
Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 10 years younger
Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 47 years older
Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 66 years older
Naguib Mahfouz — novelist, Nobel laureate, 3 years younger

Africa

Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 10 years younger
Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 16 years older
Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 17 years younger
Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 2 years older
Chinua Achebe — novelist, 22 years younger
Julius Nyerere — first president of Tanzania, 14 years younger

Asia

Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 15 years older
Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 39 years older
Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 2 years younger
Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 7 years older
Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India, 9 years younger
Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 7 years older

Americas

Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 22 years younger
Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 19 years older
Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 21 years younger
Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 52 years older
Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 61 years older
Ronald Reagan — 40th US president, "Reaganomics" and the end of the Cold War, 3 years younger

Oceania

Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 37 years older
Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 11 years younger
Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 10 years older
Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 28 years younger
Don Bradman — cricketer, born the same year
Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 8 years older

The world in their lifetime

1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 0, Middle East
1914–1918 World War I — aged 6, Whole world
1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 6, Americas
1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 7, Middle East
1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 8, Middle East
1917 October Revolution — aged 9, Eastern Europe & Russia
1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 9, Eastern Europe & Russia
1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 10, Whole world
1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 11, Europe
1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 20, Europe
1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 21, Americas
1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 21, Eastern Europe & Russia
1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 25, Europe
1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 28, Eastern Europe & Russia
1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 28, Europe
1939–1945 World War II — aged 31, Whole world
1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 33, Eastern Europe & Russia
1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 33, Europe
1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 34, Eastern Europe & Russia
1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 37, Asia
1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 37, Eastern Europe & Russia
1947–1991 Cold War — aged 39, Whole world
1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 40, Whole world
1949 Founding of NATO — aged 41, Whole world
1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 45, Europe
1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 45, Asia
1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 49, Eastern Europe & Russia
1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 53, Eastern Europe & Russia
1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — aged 58, Asia
1969 Moon landing — aged 61, Americas
c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 62, Americas
1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 67, Asia
1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — aged 72, Whole world
1981 AIDS first described — aged 73, Whole world
1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — aged 75, Americas
1985–1991 Perestroika — aged 77, Eastern Europe & Russia
1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — aged 81, Europe
1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — aged 81, Europe
1989 Revolutions of 1989 — aged 81, Eastern Europe & Russia
1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — aged 83, Eastern Europe & Russia