Søren Kierkegaard
%20-%20(cropped).jpg?width=160 "La Biblioteca Real de Dinamarca · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons")
1813 – 1855 · 42 years · Copenhagen · Europe
Put the individual at the centre of philosophy: personal choice, anxiety, and faith as a "leap" rather than a conclusion of reasoning. Seen as the forerunner of existentialism; he published many books under pseudonyms.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: La Biblioteca Real de Dinamarca · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
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Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Charles Darwin — naturalist, author of evolutionary theory, 4 years older
- Karl Marx — philosopher and economist, 5 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 6 years younger
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — German poet and thinker, 64 years older
- Ludwig van Beethoven — German composer, 43 years older
- Victor Hugo — novelist and poet, 11 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 8 years younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 15 years younger
- Alexander Pushkin — Russian poet, 14 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 21 years younger
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 27 years younger
- Nicholas I — emperor who crushed the Decembrist revolt, 17 years older
Middle East
- Abdulmejid I — sultan of the Tanzimat reforms, 10 years younger
- Mahmud II — sultan who destroyed the Janissaries, 28 years older
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 29 years younger
- Abdulaziz — first sultan to visit Western Europe, 17 years younger
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 31 years younger
Africa
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, born the same year
- Muhammad Ali of Egypt — ruler of Egypt, 44 years older
- Shaka — King of the Zulu, 26 years older
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 31 years younger
- Ranavalona I — Queen of Madagascar, 35 years older
- Moshoeshoe I — founder of Lesotho, 27 years older
Asia
- Katsushika Hokusai — Japanese artist, 53 years older
- Tokugawa Ienari — longest-serving shogun, for half a century, 40 years older
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 24 years younger
- Tokugawa Ieyoshi — shogun who died just after the Black Ships arrived, 20 years older
- Tokugawa Iesada — shogun under whom Japan opened its ports to the West, 11 years younger
- Empress Dowager Cixi — Empress Dowager of China, 22 years younger
Americas
- Abraham Lincoln — 16th President of the United States, 4 years older
- Simón Bolívar — liberator of South America, 30 years older
- Benito Juárez — President of Mexico, 7 years older
- José de San Martín — liberator of Argentina, Chile and Peru, 35 years older
- Ulysses S. Grant — 18th US president, commanding general of the Union Army, 9 years younger
- Andrew Jackson — 7th US president, the Trail of Tears and the Jacksonian era, 46 years older
Oceania
- Truganini — Aboriginal Tasmanian woman, 1 year older
- Henry Parkes — Premier of New South Wales, 'Father of Federation', 2 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 25 years younger
- Hongi Hika — Ngāpuhi Māori chief, 41 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1814–1815 Congress of Vienna — aged 1, Europe
- 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora — aged 2, Asia
- 1815 Battle of Waterloo — aged 2, Europe
- 1816 Year Without a Summer — aged 3, Europe
- 1817–1824 First cholera pandemic — aged 4, Asia
- 1817 San Martín's Crossing of the Andes — aged 4, Americas
- 1819 Raffles founds modern Singapore — aged 6, Asia
- 1822 Independence of Brazil — aged 9, Americas
- 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay — aged 15, Middle East
- c. 1831 Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa — aged 18, Asia
- 1833 Abolition of slavery in the British Empire — aged 20, Europe
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek — aged 22, Africa
- 1835 Darwin in the Galápagos — aged 22, Americas
- 1838–1839 Trail of Tears — aged 25, Americas
- 1839–1842 First Opium War — aged 26, Asia
- 1839 Birth of photography: the daguerreotype — aged 26, Europe
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — aged 26, Middle East
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — aged 26, Middle East
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — aged 32, Europe
- 1846 First public demonstration of ether anaesthesia — aged 33, Americas
- 1846–1848 Mexican–American War — aged 33, Americas
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — aged 34, Africa
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — aged 35, Europe
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto — aged 35, Europe
- 1850–1864 Taiping Rebellion — aged 37, Asia
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — aged 38, Oceania
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — aged 40, Asia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — aged 40, Eastern Europe & Russia