Richard Sorge
1895 – 1944 · 49 years · Sabunchi, near Baku · Middle East
A German journalist in Tokyo who spied for Soviet military intelligence: he warned of Germany's attack and in September 1941 reported that Japan would not strike the USSR. Hanged by the Japanese in 1944, he was made a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1964.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 21 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 16 years older
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 14 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 6 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 28 years older
- Bertrand Russell — British philosopher, logician and public intellectual, 23 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 17 years older
- Georgy Zhukov — Marshal of the Soviet Union, 1 year younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 25 years older
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 67 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 61 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 39 years younger
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 14 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 3 years younger
- Vladimir Mayakovsky — Futurist poet, 2 years older
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 34 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 23 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 53 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 23 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 3 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 30 years younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 51 years older
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 20 years older
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 11 years younger
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 26 years older
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 2 years older
- Jawaharlal Nehru — first Prime Minister of India, 6 years older
- Ho Chi Minh — President of North Vietnam, 5 years older
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 34 years older
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 6 years younger
Americas
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 6 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 39 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 48 years older
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 34 years younger
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 35 years younger
- Henry Ford — industrialist, founder of Ford Motor Company, 32 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 24 years older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 3 years younger
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 24 years younger
- Douglas Mawson — geologist and Antarctic explorer, 13 years older
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 5 years younger
- Albert Namatjira — painter, 7 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1895 Discovery of X-rays — aged 0, Europe
- 1895 Popov's radio receiver — aged 0, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — aged 1, Asia
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — aged 2, Africa
- 1898 Battle of Omdurman — aged 3, Africa
- 1899–1902 Second Boer War — aged 4, Africa
- 1901 First Nobel Prizes — aged 6, Europe
- 1903 Wright brothers' first flight — aged 8, Americas
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — aged 9, Africa
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 10, Europe
- 1905–1907 Russian Revolution of 1905 — aged 10, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1905–1911 Persian Constitutional Revolution — aged 10, Middle East
- 1905 Battle of Tsushima — aged 10, Asia
- 1906 San Francisco earthquake — aged 11, Americas
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 13, Middle East
- 1908 Tunguska event — aged 13, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1908 Young Turk Revolution — aged 13, Middle East
- 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution — aged 15, Americas
- 1910 Japan annexes Korea — aged 15, Asia
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — aged 16, Asia
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — aged 16, Oceania
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 19, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 19, Americas
- 1914 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand — aged 19, Europe
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 20, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 21, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 22, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 22, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 23, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 24, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 33, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash — aged 34, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 34, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 38, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 41, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 41, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 44, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 46, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 46, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 47, Eastern Europe & Russia