Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
1857 – 1935 · 78 years · Kaluga · Eastern Europe & Russia
A Kaluga schoolteacher who showed that spaceflight was possible with rockets and derived the rocket equation.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 10 years younger
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 17 years younger
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 22 years younger
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 24 years younger
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 32 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 38 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 21 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 13 years younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 29 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 23 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 17 years older
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 36 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 24 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 4 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 15 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 41 years younger
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 61 years younger
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 13 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 61 years younger
- 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
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 68 years younger
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 17 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
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 4 years younger
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 9 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 20 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 5 years older
Americas
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 1 year older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 10 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 32 years younger
- Henry Ford — industrialist, founder of Ford Motor Company, 6 years younger
- Woodrow Wilson — 28th US president, World War I and the League of Nations, 1 year older
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 10 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 14 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 41 years younger
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 62 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 10 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 4 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 19 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
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — aged 7, 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
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 22, Americas
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 26, Asia
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 28, Asia
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 29, Europe
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 32, Europe
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 36, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 48, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 51, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 57, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 57, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 58, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 59, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 60, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 60, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 61, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 62, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 71, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 72, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 72, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 76, Europe