Élie Metchnikoff
1845 – 1916 · 71 years · Ivanovka (Kharkov Governorate) · Eastern Europe & Russia
At Messina in 1882 he stuck thorns into starfish larvae and discovered phagocytosis — the start of the cellular theory of immunity, honoured with the 1908 Nobel Prize. He coined the word 'gerontology' and linked long life to lactic acid bacteria.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 26 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 22 years younger
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 29 years younger
- Karl Marx — philosopher and economist, 27 years older
- Charles Darwin — naturalist, author of evolutionary theory, 36 years older
- Vincent van Gogh — painter, 8 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 17 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 11 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 5 years older
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 25 years younger
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 33 years younger
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 24 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 36 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 3 years older
- Sergei Witte — finance minister, first chairman of the Council of Ministers, 4 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 16 years younger
- Vladimir Mayakovsky — Futurist poet, 48 years younger
- Richard Sorge — Soviet intelligence officer, 50 years younger
Africa
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 1 year older
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 32 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 47 years younger
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 5 years older
- Taytu Betul — Empress of Ethiopia, 6 years younger
- Samori Ture — founder of the Wassoulou Empire, 17 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 24 years younger
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 48 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 8 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 7 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 16 years younger
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 21 years younger
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 2 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 11 years younger
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 44 years younger
- Abraham Lincoln — 16th President of the United States, 36 years older
- John D. Rockefeller — industrialist, founder of Standard Oil, 6 years older
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 2 years younger
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 26 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 53 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 7 years older
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 2 years younger
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 16 years younger
- Henry Parkes — Premier of New South Wales, 'Father of Federation', 30 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — aged 0, Europe
- 1846 First surgery under ether — aged 1, Americas
- 1846–1848 Mexican–American War — aged 1, Americas
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — aged 2, Africa
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — aged 3, Europe
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto — aged 3, Europe
- 1850–1864 Taiping Rebellion — aged 5, Asia
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — aged 6, Oceania
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — aged 8, Asia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — aged 8, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1856–1860 Second Opium War — aged 11, Asia
- 1858 Treaty of Aigun — aged 13, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — aged 14, Europe
- 1859 Imam Shamil surrenders at Gunib — aged 14, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 16, Europe
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — aged 16, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — aged 16, Americas
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — aged 18, Americas
- 1863 Battle of Gettysburg — aged 18, Americas
- 1864 End of the Caucasian War and the Circassian expulsion — aged 19, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — aged 19, Americas
- 1865 Assassination of Abraham Lincoln — aged 20, Americas
- 1866 Austro-Prussian War — aged 21, Europe
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — aged 22, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1867 Canadian Confederation — aged 22, Americas
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — aged 23, Asia
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 31, Americas
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 34, Americas
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 38, Asia
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 40, Asia
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 41, Europe
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 44, Europe
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 48, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 60, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 63, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 69, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 69, Americas
- 1914 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand — aged 69, Europe
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 70, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 71, Middle East