Edmund Husserl
1859 – 1938 · 79 years · Freiburg · Europe
Philosophy: Phenomenology (founder)
He urged a return "to the things themselves": describing experience as it is given to consciousness, setting theories aside. Heidegger's teacher; under the Nazis he was barred from the university because of his Jewish origins.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 8 years younger
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 15 years younger
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 20 years younger
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 22 years younger
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 30 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 40 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 19 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 11 years younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 31 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 25 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 19 years older
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 38 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 22 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 2 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 17 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 39 years younger
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 59 years younger
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 15 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 59 years younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 15 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 33 years younger
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 46 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 66 years younger
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 16 years younger
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 10 years younger
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 34 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 2 years younger
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 7 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 22 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 7 years older
Americas
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 3 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 12 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 30 years younger
- Henry Ford — industrialist, founder of Ford Motor Company, 4 years younger
- Woodrow Wilson — 28th US president, World War I and the League of Nations, 3 years older
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 12 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 12 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 39 years younger
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 60 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 12 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 2 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 21 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — aged 0, Europe
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 2, Europe
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — aged 2, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — aged 2, Americas
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — aged 4, Americas
- 1864 End of the Caucasian War and the Circassian expulsion — aged 5, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — aged 5, Americas
- 1865 Assassination of Abraham Lincoln — aged 6, Americas
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — aged 8, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1867 Canadian Confederation — aged 8, Americas
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — aged 9, Asia
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — aged 10, Africa
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — aged 10, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1869 First transcontinental railroad — aged 10, Americas
- 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War — aged 11, Europe
- 1871 Unification of Germany — aged 12, Europe
- 1871 Paris Commune — aged 12, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 17, Americas
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 20, Americas
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 24, Asia
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 26, Asia
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 27, Europe
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 30, Europe
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 34, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 46, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 49, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 55, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 55, Americas
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 56, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 57, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 58, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 58, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 59, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 60, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 69, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 70, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 70, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 74, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 77, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 77, Europe