Who Was Alive

Famous people born in the 18th century

142 people we track were born in the 18th century. The best known are on the timeline.

  1. Benjamin Franklin
  2. Leonhard Euler
  3. Carl Linnaeus
  4. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  5. Adam Smith
  6. Immanuel Kant
  7. James Cook
  8. George Washington
  9. John Adams
  10. Thomas Jefferson
  11. Francisco Goya
  12. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  13. James Madison
  14. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  15. Friedrich Schiller
  16. Katsushika Hokusai
  17. Ludwig van Beethoven
  18. Napoleon
  19. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
  20. Jane Austen
  21. Carl Friedrich Gauss
  22. Lord Byron
  23. Michael Faraday
  24. Alexander Pushkin
Drag across the timeline to see who was alive in any year and the age each person reached that year. Faded ends mark uncertain dates.
  1. Napoleon 1769 – 1821
  2. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1749 – 1832
  3. George Washington 1732 – 1799
  4. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756 – 1791
  5. Ludwig van Beethoven c. 1770 – 1827
  6. Immanuel Kant 1724 – 1804
  7. Alexander Pushkin 1799 – 1837
  8. Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712 – 1778
  9. Thomas Jefferson 1743 – 1826
  10. Adam Smith 1723 – 1790
  11. Lord Byron 1788 – 1824
  12. Benjamin Franklin 1706 – 1790
  13. Carl Linnaeus 1707 – 1778
  14. Jane Austen 1775 – 1817
  15. Carl Friedrich Gauss 1777 – 1855
  16. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1770 – 1831
  17. Leonhard Euler 1707 – 1783
  18. John Adams 1735 – 1826
  19. James Cook 1728 – 1779
  20. Francisco Goya 1746 – 1828
  21. Friedrich Schiller 1759 – 1805
  22. Michael Faraday 1791 – 1867
  23. Katsushika Hokusai 1760 – 1849
  24. James Madison 1751 – 1836
  25. Honoré de Balzac 1799 – 1850
  26. Simón Bolívar 1783 – 1830
  27. Arthur Schopenhauer 1788 – 1860
  28. Franz Schubert 1797 – 1828
  29. Heinrich Heine 1797 – 1856
  30. John Quincy Adams 1767 – 1848
  31. Andrew Jackson 1767 – 1845
  32. William Blake 1757 – 1827
  33. James Watt 1736 – 1819
  34. David Hume 1711 – 1776
  35. Joseph Haydn 1732 – 1809
  36. James Monroe 1758 – 1831
  37. Catherine II of Russia 1729 – 1796
  38. Denis Diderot 1713 – 1784
  39. Martin Van Buren 1782 – 1862
  40. Zachary Taylor 1784 – 1850
  41. James Buchanan 1791 – 1868
  42. John Keats 1795 – 1821
  43. James K. Polk 1795 – 1849
  44. John Tyler 1790 – 1862
  45. Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 – 1822
  46. Alexander von Humboldt 1769 – 1859
  47. William Wordsworth 1770 – 1850
  48. Millard Fillmore 1800 – 1874
  49. William Henry Harrison 1773 – 1841
  50. Walter Scott 1771 – 1832
  51. Stendhal 1783 – 1842
  52. Thomas Paine 1737 – 1809
  53. Samuel Johnson 1709 – 1784
  54. Marie Antoinette 1755 – 1793
  55. Maximilien Robespierre 1758 – 1794
  56. Joseph Fourier 1768 – 1830
  57. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres 1780 – 1867
  58. Mary Shelley 1797 – 1851
  59. Auguste Comte 1798 – 1857
  60. Antoine Lavoisier 1743 – 1794
  61. Mary Wollstonecraft 1759 – 1797
  62. Adam Mickiewicz 1798 – 1855
  63. Pierre-Simon Laplace 1749 – 1827
  64. Louis XVI of France 1754 – 1793
  65. Frederick II of Prussia 1712 – 1786
  66. Edmund Burke 1729 – 1797
  67. Robert Burns 1759 – 1796
  68. Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772 – 1834
  69. Eugène Delacroix 1798 – 1863
  70. André-Marie Ampère 1775 – 1836
  71. Thomas Carlyle 1795 – 1881
  72. Alessandro Volta 1745 – 1827
  73. Jean Le Rond d'Alembert 1717 – 1783
  74. William Herschel 1738 – 1822
  75. Edward Jenner 1749 – 1823
  76. Johann Gottlieb Fichte 1762 – 1814
  77. Novalis 1772 – 1801
  78. Charles Babbage 1791 – 1871
  79. John Dalton 1766 – 1844
  80. Giacomo Leopardi 1798 – 1837
  81. Alexander I of Russia 1777 – 1825
  82. Mikhail Lomonosov 1711 – 1765
  83. Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck 1744 – 1829
  84. Washington Irving 1783 – 1859
  85. Alphonse de Lamartine 1790 – 1869
  86. Pius IX 1792 – 1878
  87. George III of Great Britain 1738 – 1820
  88. Carl von Clausewitz 1780 – 1831
  89. Alessandro Manzoni 1785 – 1873
  90. Gioachino Rossini 1792 – 1868
  91. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing 1729 – 1781
  92. Louis XV of France 1710 – 1774
  93. Maria Theresa of Austria 1717 – 1780
  94. Giacomo Casanova 1725 – 1798
  95. Marquis de Sade 1740 – 1814
  96. Jeremy Bentham 1748 – 1832
  97. Thomas Robert Malthus 1766 – 1834
  98. Nicholas I of Russia 1796 – 1855
  99. Edward Gibbon 1737 – 1794
  100. Horatio Nelson 1758 – 1805
  101. Joseph-Louis Lagrange 1736 – 1813
  102. Alexander Hamilton 1757 – 1804
  103. Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington 1769 – 1852
  104. Niccolò Paganini 1782 – 1840
  105. Georg Simon Ohm 1789 – 1854
  106. Johann Gottfried Herder 1744 – 1803
  107. Humphry Davy 1778 – 1829
  108. Charles-Augustin de Coulomb 1736 – 1806
  109. Shaka Zulu 1785–1789 – 1828
  110. Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky 1792 – 1856
  111. Hans Christian Ørsted 1777 – 1851
  112. Anders Celsius 1701 – 1744
  113. Gregory XVI 1765 – 1846
  114. Wilhelm von Humboldt 1767 – 1835
  115. David Ricardo 1772 – 1823
  116. Samuel Finley Breese Morse 1791 – 1872
  117. Isabelle de Charrière 1740 – 1805
  118. Pius VII 1742 – 1823
  119. William IV 1765 – 1837
  120. Friedrich Hölderlin 1770 – 1843
  121. Amedeo Avogadro 1776 – 1856
  122. Pierre-Augustin de Beaumarchais 1732 – 1799
  123. Klemens von Metternich 1773 – 1859
  124. Carlo Goldoni 1707 – 1793
  125. Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord 1754 – 1839
  126. Paul I of Russia 1754 – 1801
  127. Jacques-Louis David 1748 – 1825
  128. George IV of the United Kingdom 1762 – 1830
  129. François-Auguste-René de Chateaubriand 1768 – 1848
  130. Joseph Priestley 1733 – 1804
  131. James Fenimore Cooper 1789 – 1851
  132. Georges Danton 1759 – 1794
  133. Leo XII 1760 – 1829
  134. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling 1775 – 1854
  135. E. T. A. Hoffmann 1776 – 1822
  136. Wilhelm I 1797 – 1888
  137. Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon 1707 – 1788
  138. Thomas Young 1773 – 1829
  139. Caspar David Friedrich 1774 – 1840
  140. Pius VI 1717 – 1799
  141. Henry Cavendish 1731 – 1810
  142. Germaine de Staël 1766 – 1817