Jean-Paul Sartre
1905 – 1980 · 75 years · Paris · Europe
The leading voice of existentialism: "existence precedes essence"; a person first exists and then makes themselves through choices they are responsible for. He declined the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: User:T1980 · CC BY 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 24 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 31 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 26 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 16 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 38 years older
- Bertrand Russell — British philosopher, logician and public intellectual, 33 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 27 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 29 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 35 years older
- Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 1 year younger
- Dmitri Shostakovich — composer, 1 year younger
- Nikita Khrushchev — Soviet leader who denounced Stalin's personality cult, 11 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 24 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 7 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 13 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 44 years older
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 63 years older
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 7 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 13 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 13 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 20 years younger
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 1 year younger
- Kwame Nkrumah — first President of Ghana, 4 years younger
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 30 years older
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 12 years older
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 36 years older
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 4 years older
- Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 5 years younger
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 4 years older
- Ho Chi Minh — President of North Vietnam, 15 years older
Americas
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 16 years older
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 25 years younger
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 24 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 49 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 58 years older
- Jorge Luis Borges — writer, 6 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 34 years older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 7 years older
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 14 years younger
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 31 years younger
- Don Bradman — cricketer, 3 years younger
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 5 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 0, Europe
- 1905–1907 Russian Revolution of 1905 — aged 0, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1905–1911 Persian Constitutional Revolution — aged 0, Middle East
- 1906 San Francisco earthquake — aged 1, Americas
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 3, Middle East
- 1908 Tunguska event — aged 3, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1908 Young Turk Revolution — aged 3, Middle East
- 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution — aged 5, Americas
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 9, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 9, Americas
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 10, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 11, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 12, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 12, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 13, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 14, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 23, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 24, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 24, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 28, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 31, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 31, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 34, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 36, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 36, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 37, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 40, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 40, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 42, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 43, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 44, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 48, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 48, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 52, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 56, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — aged 61, Asia
- 1969 Moon landing — aged 64, Americas
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 65, Americas
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 70, Asia
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — aged 75, Whole world