Kitaro Nishida
1870 – 1945 · 75 years · Kyoto · Asia
Philosophy: Kyoto School (founder)
A professor at Kyoto University who brought Zen experience together with Western philosophy. In An Inquiry into the Good (1911) he made "pure experience" his central idea.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 4 years younger
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 9 years younger
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 3 years older
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 11 years younger
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 19 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 51 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 8 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, born the same year
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 42 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 36 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 30 years older
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 49 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 11 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 9 years older
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 28 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 28 years younger
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 48 years younger
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 26 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 48 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 22 years younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 26 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 55 years younger
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 5 years younger
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 30 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 1 year older
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 23 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 9 years older
- Jawaharlal Nehru — first Prime Minister of India, 19 years younger
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 4 years older
- Ho Chi Minh — President of North Vietnam, 20 years younger
Americas
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 14 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 23 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 19 years younger
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 59 years younger
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 60 years younger
- Henry Ford — industrialist, founder of Ford Motor Company, 7 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 1 year younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 28 years younger
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 49 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 23 years older
- Douglas Mawson — geologist and Antarctic explorer, 12 years younger
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 9 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War — aged 0, Europe
- 1871 Unification of Germany — aged 1, Europe
- 1871 Paris Commune — aged 1, Europe
- 1874 First Impressionist exhibition — aged 4, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 6, Americas
- 1876–1878 Great Famine in India — aged 6, Asia
- 1876–1878 The first Ottoman constitution — aged 6, Middle East
- 1877 Premiere of Swan Lake — aged 7, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1878 Congress of Berlin — aged 8, Europe
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 9, Americas
- 1879 Battle of Isandlwana — aged 9, Africa
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 13, Asia
- 1884–1885 Berlin Conference — aged 14, Europe
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 15, Asia
- 1885 The Mahdists take Khartoum — aged 15, Africa
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 16, Europe
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 19, Europe
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 23, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 35, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 38, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 44, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 44, Americas
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 45, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 46, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 47, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 47, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 48, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 49, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 58, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 59, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 59, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 63, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 66, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 66, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 69, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 71, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 71, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 72, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 75, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 75, Eastern Europe & Russia