Wangarĩ Maathai

Kingkongphoto & www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel Maryland, USA · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

environmentalist, Nobel laureate

1940 – 2011 · 71 years · Nairobi · Africa

Kenyan founder of the Green Belt Movement that planted millions of trees; first African woman Nobel Peace laureate (2004).

Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century

Portrait: Kingkongphoto & www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel Maryland, USA · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Contemporaries around the world

Europe

Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 59 years older
Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 66 years older
Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 61 years older
Elizabeth II — Britain's longest-reigning monarch, on the throne for 70 years, 14 years older
Alan Turing — mathematician, father of computer science, 28 years older
George VI — Second World War king who overcame a stammer, 45 years older

Eastern Europe & Russia

Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 6 years older
Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 62 years older
Mikhail Gorbachev — last leader of the Soviet Union, 9 years older
Boris Yeltsin — first President of Russia, 9 years older
Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 34 years older
Dmitri Shostakovich — composer, 34 years older

Middle East

Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 42 years older
Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 22 years older
Naguib Mahfouz — novelist, Nobel laureate, 29 years older
Umm Kulthum — singer, 42 years older
Nâzım Hikmet — poet, 38 years older

Africa

Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 22 years older
Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 48 years older
Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 15 years older
Chinua Achebe — novelist, 10 years older
Miriam Makeba — singer, 8 years older
Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 34 years older

Asia

Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 47 years older
Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 30 years older
Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 39 years older
Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India, 23 years older
Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 39 years older
Ho Chi Minh — President of North Vietnam, 50 years older

Americas

Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 10 years older
Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 51 years older
Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 11 years older
Jimmy Carter — 39th US president, the Camp David Accords, 16 years older
Fidel Castro — leader of Cuba, 14 years older
Gabriel García Márquez — novelist, Nobel laureate, 13 years older

Oceania

Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 21 years older
Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 4 years older
Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 42 years older
Don Bradman — cricketer, 32 years older
Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 40 years older
Albert Namatjira — painter, 38 years older

The world in their lifetime

1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 1, Eastern Europe & Russia
1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 1, Europe
1941 German invasion of the USSR — aged 1, Eastern Europe & Russia
1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — aged 1, Oceania
1941–1942 Battle of Moscow — aged 1, Eastern Europe & Russia
1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 2, Eastern Europe & Russia
1942 The Battle of Midway — aged 2, Oceania
1943 Battle of Kursk — aged 3, Eastern Europe & Russia
1944 D-Day: Normandy landings — aged 4, Europe
1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 5, Asia
1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 5, Eastern Europe & Russia
1945 Founding of the United Nations — aged 5, Whole world
1945 ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer — aged 5, Americas
1945 Indonesia proclaims independence — aged 5, Asia
1945 Yalta Conference — aged 5, Eastern Europe & Russia
1945–1946 Nuremberg trials — aged 5, Europe
1947–1991 Cold War — aged 7, Whole world
1947 Independence and Partition of India — aged 7, Asia
1947 Invention of the transistor — aged 7, Americas
1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 8, Whole world
1948 Founding of the State of Israel — aged 8, Middle East
1949 Founding of NATO — aged 9, Whole world
1949 Founding of the People's Republic of China — aged 9, Asia
1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 13, Europe
1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 13, Asia
1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 17, Eastern Europe & Russia
1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 21, Eastern Europe & Russia
1969 Moon landing — aged 29, Americas
c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 30, Americas
1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 35, Asia
1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — aged 40, Whole world
1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — aged 43, Americas
1985–1991 Perestroika — aged 45, Eastern Europe & Russia
1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — aged 49, Europe
1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — aged 49, Europe
1989 Revolutions of 1989 — aged 49, Eastern Europe & Russia
1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — aged 51, Eastern Europe & Russia
2001 September 11 attacks — aged 61, Americas
2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — aged 64, Asia
2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami — aged 71, Asia