Roald Amundsen
1872 – 1928 · 56 years · Oslo · Europe
Norwegian who led the first expedition to reach the South Pole (1911) and first sailed the Northwest Passage.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 5 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 2 years younger
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 7 years younger
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 9 years younger
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 17 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 53 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 2 years older
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 6 years younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 44 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 38 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 32 years older
- Ivan Pavlov — physiologist, Nobel laureate, 23 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 9 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 11 years older
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 30 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 26 years younger
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 46 years younger
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 28 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 46 years younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 28 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 20 years younger
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 3 years younger
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 32 years older
- Taytu Betul — Empress of Ethiopia, 21 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 3 years older
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 21 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 11 years older
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 6 years older
- Emperor Taishō — ailing emperor of the 'Taishō democracy' era, 7 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 35 years older
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 25 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 16 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 17 years younger
- Henry Ford — industrialist, founder of Ford Motor Company, 9 years older
- Woodrow Wilson — 28th US president, World War I and the League of Nations, 16 years older
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 25 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 1 year older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 26 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 25 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 11 years older
- Douglas Mawson — geologist and Antarctic explorer, 10 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 34 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1874 First Impressionist exhibition — aged 2, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 4, Americas
- 1876–1878 Great Famine in India — aged 4, Asia
- 1876–1878 The first Ottoman constitution — aged 4, Middle East
- 1877 Premiere of Swan Lake — aged 5, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1878 Congress of Berlin — aged 6, Europe
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 7, Americas
- 1879 Battle of Isandlwana — aged 7, Africa
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 11, Asia
- 1884–1885 Berlin Conference — aged 12, Europe
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 13, Asia
- 1885 The Mahdists take Khartoum — aged 13, Africa
- 1885–1908 The Congo Free State — aged 13, Africa
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 14, Europe
- 1886 The Witwatersrand Gold Rush — aged 14, Africa
- 1888 Golden Law abolishes slavery in Brazil — aged 16, Americas
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 17, Europe
- 1889 Van Gogh's The Starry Night — aged 17, Europe
- 1891 Discovery of Java Man — aged 19, Asia
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 21, Oceania
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — aged 21, Oceania
- 1894–1895 First Sino-Japanese War — aged 22, Asia
- 1894 Yersin identifies the plague bacterium — aged 22, Asia
- 1895 Discovery of X-rays — aged 23, Europe
- 1895 Popov's radio receiver — aged 23, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — aged 24, Asia
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — aged 25, Africa
- 1901 First Nobel Prizes — aged 29, Europe
- 1903 Wright brothers' first flight — aged 31, Americas
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 33, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 36, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 42, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 42, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 43, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 44, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 45, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 45, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 46, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 47, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 56, Europe