Maxim Gorky
1868 – 1936 · 68 years · Nizhny Novgorod · Eastern Europe & Russia
Alexei Peshkov took the pen name Gorky ('bitter') and won fame with the play The Lower Depths and the novel Mother. Nominated five times for the Nobel Prize, he lent his name to his native Nizhny Novgorod from 1932 to 1990.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 1 year older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 6 years younger
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 11 years younger
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 13 years younger
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 21 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 49 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 10 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 2 years younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 40 years older
- Georgy Zhukov — Marshal of the Soviet Union, 28 years younger
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 34 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 28 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 13 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 7 years older
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 26 years older
- Sergei Witte — finance minister, first chairman of the Council of Ministers, 19 years older
- Richard Sorge — Soviet intelligence officer, 27 years younger
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 30 years younger
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 50 years younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 24 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 24 years younger
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 57 years younger
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 7 years younger
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 28 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 1 year younger
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 25 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 7 years older
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 2 years older
- Emperor Taishō — ailing emperor of the 'Taishō democracy' era, 11 years younger
- Jawaharlal Nehru — first Prime Minister of India, 21 years younger
Americas
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 12 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 21 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 21 years younger
- John D. Rockefeller — industrialist, founder of Standard Oil, 29 years older
- Henry Ford — industrialist, founder of Ford Motor Company, 5 years older
- Woodrow Wilson — 28th US president, World War I and the League of Nations, 12 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 3 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 30 years younger
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 51 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 21 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 7 years older
- Douglas Mawson — geologist and Antarctic explorer, 14 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — aged 0, Asia
- 1868 Russia conquers Samarkand from Bukhara — aged 0, Asia
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — aged 1, Africa
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — aged 1, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1869 First transcontinental railroad — aged 1, Americas
- 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War — aged 2, Europe
- 1871 Unification of Germany — aged 3, Europe
- 1871 Paris Commune — aged 3, Europe
- 1874 First Impressionist exhibition — aged 6, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 8, Americas
- 1876–1878 Great Famine in India — aged 8, Asia
- 1876–1878 The first Ottoman constitution — aged 8, Middle East
- 1877 Premiere of Swan Lake — aged 9, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 — aged 9, Europe
- 1878 Congress of Berlin — aged 10, Europe
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 11, Americas
- 1879 Battle of Isandlwana — aged 11, Africa
- 1879 Baku oil boom and Branobel — aged 11, Middle East
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 15, Asia
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 17, Asia
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 18, Europe
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 21, Europe
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 25, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 37, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 40, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 46, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 46, Americas
- 1914 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand — aged 46, Europe
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 47, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 48, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 49, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 49, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 50, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 51, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 60, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash — aged 61, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 61, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 65, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 68, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 68, Europe