Ferdinand de Saussure
1857 – 1913 · 56 years · Geneva · Europe
Philosophy: Structuralism (founder)
Showed that language is a system of signs in which a word's meaning comes from its difference from other words. His Course in General Linguistics, published from students' notes in 1916 after his death, became the basis of structuralism.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: "F. Jullien Genève", maybe Frank-Henri Jullien (1882–1938) · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 10 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 38 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 17 years younger
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 22 years younger
- Vincent van Gogh — painter, 4 years older
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 24 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 29 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 23 years older
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 13 years younger
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 17 years older
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 21 years younger
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 36 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 24 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 15 years older
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 4 years younger
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 41 years younger
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 13 years older
- Abdulaziz — first sultan to visit Western Europe, 27 years older
Africa
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 13 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 35 years younger
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 44 years older
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 17 years older
- Taytu Betul — Empress of Ethiopia, 6 years older
- Samori Ture — founder of the Wassoulou Empire, 29 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 12 years younger
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 36 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 20 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 5 years older
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 4 years younger
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 9 years younger
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 10 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 1 year older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 32 years younger
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 10 years older
- Woodrow Wilson — 28th US president, World War I and the League of Nations, 1 year older
- Theodore Roosevelt — 26th US president, the Panama Canal and trust-busting, 1 year younger
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 14 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 41 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 19 years older
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 10 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 4 years younger
- Henry Parkes — Premier of New South Wales, 'Father of Federation', 42 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — aged 2, Europe
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 4, Europe
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — aged 4, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — aged 4, Americas
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — aged 6, Americas
- 1864 End of the Caucasian War and the Circassian expulsion — aged 7, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — aged 7, Americas
- 1865 Assassination of Abraham Lincoln — aged 8, Americas
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — aged 10, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1867 Canadian Confederation — aged 10, Americas
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — aged 11, Asia
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — aged 12, Africa
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — aged 12, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1869 First transcontinental railroad — aged 12, Americas
- 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War — aged 13, Europe
- 1871 Unification of Germany — aged 14, Europe
- 1871 Paris Commune — aged 14, Europe
- 1874 First Impressionist exhibition — aged 17, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 19, Americas
- 1876–1878 Great Famine in India — aged 19, Asia
- 1876–1878 The first Ottoman constitution — aged 19, Middle East
- 1877 Premiere of Swan Lake — aged 20, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1878 Congress of Berlin — aged 21, Europe
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 22, Americas
- 1879 Battle of Isandlwana — aged 22, Africa
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 26, Asia
- 1884–1885 Berlin Conference — aged 27, Europe
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 28, Asia
- 1885 The Mahdists take Khartoum — aged 28, Africa
- 1885–1908 The Congo Free State — aged 28, Africa
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 29, Europe
- 1886 The Witwatersrand Gold Rush — aged 29, Africa
- 1888 Golden Law abolishes slavery in Brazil — aged 31, Americas
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 32, Europe
- 1889 Van Gogh's The Starry Night — aged 32, Europe
- 1891 Discovery of Java Man — aged 34, Asia
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 36, Oceania
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — aged 36, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 48, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 51, Middle East