Hideki Yukawa
1907 – 1981 · 74 years · Kyoto · Asia
Predicted the meson as the carrier of the nuclear force; Japan's first Nobel laureate (1949).
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Nobel Foundation archive · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 26 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 33 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 28 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 18 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 40 years older
- Elizabeth II — Britain's longest-reigning monarch, on the throne for 70 years, 19 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 29 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 27 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 37 years older
- Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 1 year older
- Dmitri Shostakovich — composer, 1 year older
- Nikita Khrushchev — Soviet leader who denounced Stalin's personality cult, 13 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 26 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 9 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 11 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 46 years older
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 65 years older
- Naguib Mahfouz — novelist, Nobel laureate, 4 years younger
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 11 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 15 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 18 years younger
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 1 year older
- Kwame Nkrumah — first President of Ghana, 2 years younger
- Julius Nyerere — first president of Tanzania, 15 years younger
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 14 years older
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 38 years older
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 6 years older
- Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 3 years younger
- Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India, 10 years younger
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 6 years older
Americas
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 18 years older
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 23 years younger
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 22 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 51 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 60 years older
- Jorge Luis Borges — writer, 8 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 36 years older
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 12 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 9 years older
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 29 years younger
- Don Bradman — cricketer, 1 year younger
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 7 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 1, Middle East
- 1908 Tunguska event — aged 1, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1908 Young Turk Revolution — aged 1, Middle East
- 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution — aged 3, Americas
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — aged 4, Asia
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — aged 4, Oceania
- 1912–1913 Balkan Wars — aged 5, Europe
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — aged 5, Oceania
- 1913 Ford's moving assembly line — aged 6, Americas
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 7, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 7, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 8, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 9, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 10, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 10, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 11, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 12, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 21, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 22, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 22, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 26, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 29, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 29, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 32, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 34, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 34, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 35, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 38, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 38, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 40, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 41, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 42, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 46, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 46, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 50, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 54, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1969 Moon landing — aged 62, Americas
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 63, Americas
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 68, Asia
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — aged 73, Whole world