Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803 – 1882 · 79 years · Concord, Massachusetts · Americas
Philosophy: American transcendentalism (founder)
Leader of the Transcendentalists. In Nature (1836) and Self-Reliance he urged people to seek truth in their own souls and in nature rather than in authority and tradition.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: User:Scewing → 2009 · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Charles Darwin — naturalist, author of evolutionary theory, 6 years younger
- Karl Marx — philosopher and economist, 15 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 16 years younger
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — German poet and thinker, 54 years older
- Vincent van Gogh — painter, 50 years younger
- Ludwig van Beethoven — German composer, 33 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 18 years younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 25 years younger
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 31 years younger
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 37 years younger
- Alexander Pushkin — Russian poet, 4 years older
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 67 years younger
Middle East
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 39 years younger
- Abdulmejid I — sultan of the Tanzimat reforms, 20 years younger
- Mahmud II — sultan who destroyed the Janissaries, 18 years older
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 58 years younger
- Abdulaziz — first sultan to visit Western Europe, 27 years younger
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 41 years younger
Africa
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 10 years younger
- Muhammad Ali of Egypt — ruler of Egypt, 34 years older
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 41 years younger
- Shaka — King of the Zulu, 16 years older
- Moshoeshoe I — founder of Lesotho, 17 years older
- Ranavalona I — Queen of Madagascar, 25 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 66 years younger
- Katsushika Hokusai — Japanese artist, 43 years older
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 34 years younger
- Tokugawa Ienari — longest-serving shogun, for half a century, 30 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 49 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 58 years younger
Americas
- Abraham Lincoln — 16th President of the United States, 6 years younger
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 44 years younger
- Simón Bolívar — liberator of South America, 20 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 53 years younger
- Benito Juárez — President of Mexico, 3 years younger
- Ulysses S. Grant — 18th US president, commanding general of the Union Army, 19 years younger
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 68 years younger
- Kamehameha I — first King of Hawaii, 45 years older
- Henry Parkes — Premier of New South Wales, 'Father of Federation', 12 years younger
- Truganini — Aboriginal Tasmanian woman, 9 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 35 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 44 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1803 Louisiana Purchase — aged 0, Americas
- 1804 Coronation of Napoleon — aged 1, Europe
- 1804–1813 First Serbian Uprising — aged 1, Europe
- 1804–1903 Usman dan Fodio's jihad and the Sokoto Caliphate — aged 1, Africa
- 1805–1848 Muhammad Ali becomes ruler of Egypt — aged 2, Africa
- 1805 Battle of Trafalgar — aged 2, Europe
- 1810–1826 Spanish American wars of independence — aged 7, Americas
- 1812 Napoleon's invasion of Russia — aged 9, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1814–1815 Congress of Vienna — aged 11, Europe
- 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora — aged 12, Asia
- 1815 Battle of Waterloo — aged 12, Europe
- 1816 Year Without a Summer — aged 13, Europe
- 1817–1824 First cholera pandemic — aged 14, Asia
- 1817 San Martín's Crossing of the Andes — aged 14, Americas
- 1819 Raffles founds modern Singapore — aged 16, Asia
- 1822 Independence of Brazil — aged 19, Americas
- 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay — aged 25, Middle East
- c. 1831 Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa — aged 28, Asia
- 1833 Abolition of slavery in the British Empire — aged 30, Europe
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek — aged 32, Africa
- 1835 Darwin in the Galápagos — aged 32, Americas
- 1838–1839 Trail of Tears — aged 35, Americas
- 1839–1842 First Opium War — aged 36, Asia
- 1839 Birth of photography: the daguerreotype — aged 36, Europe
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — aged 36, Middle East
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — aged 36, Middle East
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — aged 42, Europe
- 1846 First public demonstration of ether anaesthesia — aged 43, Americas
- 1846–1848 Mexican–American War — aged 43, Americas
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — aged 44, Africa
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — aged 45, Europe
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto — aged 45, Europe
- 1850–1864 Taiping Rebellion — aged 47, Asia
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — aged 48, Oceania
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — aged 50, Asia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — aged 50, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — aged 56, Europe
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 58, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 73, Americas
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 76, Americas