Who Was Alive

Bruce Lee

Hong Kong–American martial artist and actor

Born 27 November 1940 · died 20 July 1973, aged 32

Who was alive at the same time as Bruce Lee?

  1. Rabindranath Tagore
  2. Mahatma Gandhi
  3. Winston Churchill
  4. Joseph Stalin
  5. Albert Einstein
  6. Pablo Picasso
  7. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
  8. Charlie Chaplin
  9. Adolf Hitler
  10. Salvador Dalí
  11. Ronald Reagan
  12. John F. Kennedy
  13. Nelson Mandela
  14. Elizabeth II
  15. Marilyn Monroe
  16. Martin Luther King Jr.
  17. Bruce Lee
  18. Joe Biden
  19. Donald Trump
  20. George W. Bush
  21. Vladimir Putin
  22. Bill Gates
  23. Michael Jackson
  24. Barack Obama
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.

When Bruce Lee was born, Adolf Hitler was 51, Albert Einstein was 61, Ronald Reagan was 29, Nelson Mandela was 22 and Mahatma Gandhi was 71.

When Bruce Lee died, Barack Obama was 11, Donald Trump was 27, Michael Jackson was 14, Vladimir Putin was 20 and Ronald Reagan was 62.

Born during Bruce Lee’s lifetime: Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Michael Jackson, Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush, Joe Biden, Bill Gates and Jimmy Wales.

Not quite contemporaries: Thomas Edison died 9 years before Bruce Lee was born, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk died 2 years before Bruce Lee was born, Sigmund Freud died about a year before Bruce Lee was born and Marie Curie died 6 years before Bruce Lee was born.

Compare

All 1,013 contemporaries we track

  1. Barack Obama born 1961
  2. Donald Trump born 1946
  3. Adolf Hitler 1889 – 1945
  4. Michael Jackson 1958 – 2009
  5. Albert Einstein 1879 – 1955
  6. Vladimir Putin born 1952
  7. Ronald Reagan 1911 – 2004
  8. Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013
  9. Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948
  10. George W. Bush born 1946
  11. Joseph Stalin 1878 – 1953
  12. Joe Biden born 1942
  13. Pablo Picasso 1881 – 1973
  14. Winston Churchill 1874 – 1965
  15. Charlie Chaplin 1889 – 1977
  16. Elizabeth II 1926 – 2022
  17. John F. Kennedy 1917 – 1963
  18. Martin Luther King Jr. 1929 – 1968
  19. Salvador Dalí 1904 – 1989
  20. Rabindranath Tagore 1861 – 1941
  21. Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1882 – 1945
  22. Bill Gates born 1955
  23. Marilyn Monroe 1926 – 1962
  24. Jimmy Wales born 1966
  25. Pope Francis 1936 – 2025
  26. Mao Zedong 1893 – 1976
  27. Steve Jobs 1955 – 2011
  28. Che Guevara 1928 – 1967
  29. Bill Clinton born 1946
  30. Charles de Gaulle 1890 – 1970
  31. Angela Merkel born 1954
  32. Nikola Tesla 1856 – 1943
  33. Neil Armstrong 1930 – 2012
  34. François Hollande born 1954
  35. Walt Disney 1901 – 1966
  36. Elvis Presley 1935 – 1977
  37. George Orwell 1903 – 1950
  38. Ernest Hemingway 1899 – 1961
  39. Margaret Thatcher 1925 – 2013
  40. James Joyce 1882 – 1941
  41. John Paul II 1920 – 2005
  42. Gabriel García Márquez 1927 – 2014
  43. Fidel Castro 1926 – 2016
  44. J. R. R. Tolkien 1892 – 1973
  45. Albert Camus 1913 – 1960
  46. Yuri Gagarin 1934 – 1968
  47. Henry Ford 1863 – 1947
  48. Marlene Dietrich 1901 – 1992
  49. Mikhail Gorbachev 1931 – 2022
  50. Benito Mussolini 1883 – 1945
  51. Jean-Paul Sartre 1905 – 1980
  52. Stephen Hawking 1942 – 2018
  53. Elon Musk born 1971
  54. Le Corbusier 1887 – 1965
  55. Frida Kahlo 1907 – 1954
  56. Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997
  57. Jimmy Carter 1924 – 2024
  58. Benedict XVI 1927 – 2022
  59. Harry S. Truman 1884 – 1972
  60. Agatha Christie 1890 – 1976
  61. Hillary Clinton born 1947
  62. George H. W. Bush 1924 – 2018
  63. Jorge Luis Borges 1899 – 1986
  64. Nicolas Sarkozy born 1955
  65. Madonna born 1958
  66. Kamala Harris born 1964
  67. Jawaharlal Nehru 1889 – 1964
  68. Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890 – 1969
  69. Alan Turing 1912 – 1954
  70. Richard Nixon 1913 – 1994
  71. Xi Jinping born 1953
  72. Naruhito born 1960
  73. Alfred Hitchcock 1899 – 1980
  74. Noam Chomsky born 1928
  75. Simone de Beauvoir 1908 – 1986
  76. Hugo Chávez 1954 – 2013
  77. George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950
  78. John Maynard Keynes 1883 – 1946
  79. Niels Bohr 1885 – 1962
  80. Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970
  81. Muammar Gaddafi 1942 – 2011
  82. Sung Jae-gi 1967 – 2013
  83. John Lennon 1940 – 1980
  84. Bob Dylan born 1941
  85. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan born 1954
  86. Max Planck 1858 – 1947
  87. Pelé 1940 – 2022
  88. Muhammad Ali 1942 – 2016
  89. Henri Matisse 1869 – 1954
  90. J. K. Rowling born 1965
  91. Frank Lloyd Wright 1867 – 1959
  92. Andy Warhol 1928 – 1987
  93. Louis Armstrong 1901 – 1971
  94. Kofi Annan 1938 – 2018
  95. Osama bin Laden 1957 – 2011
  96. Virginia Woolf 1882 – 1941
  97. Akira Kurosawa 1910 – 1998
  98. Lech Wałęsa born 1943
  99. Freddie Mercury 1946 – 1991
  100. Charles III born 1948
  101. Lyndon B. Johnson 1908 – 1973
  102. Gerald Ford 1913 – 2006
  103. Diego Maradona 1960 – 2020
  104. Eminem born 1972
  105. Leo XIV born 1955
  106. Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951
  107. Indira Gandhi 1917 – 1984
  108. Narendra Modi born 1950
  109. Rafael Correa born 1963
  110. Huang Xianfan 1899 – 1982
  111. Enrico Fermi 1901 – 1954
  112. Naguib Mahfouz 1911 – 2006
  113. Aung San Suu Kyi born 1945
  114. Steven Spielberg born 1946
  115. Michael Schumacher born 1969
  116. Nikita Khrushchev 1894 – 1971
  117. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900 – 1944
  118. Anne Frank 1929 – 1945
  119. Saddam Hussein 1937 – 2006
  120. Benjamin Netanyahu born 1949
  121. H. G. Wells 1866 – 1946
  122. Helen Keller 1880 – 1968
  123. Tenzin Gyatso born 1935
  124. Dmitry Medvedev born 1965
  125. Anna Netrebko born 1971
  126. Pablo Neruda 1904 – 1973
  127. Rafael Orozco Maestre 1954 – 1992
  128. Igor Stravinsky 1882 – 1971
  129. David Hilbert 1862 – 1943
  130. Thomas Mann 1875 – 1955
  131. Erwin Schrödinger 1887 – 1961
  132. Silvio Berlusconi 1936 – 2023
  133. Bob Marley 1945 – 1981
  134. Shinzō Abe 1954 – 2022
  135. Herbert Hoover 1874 – 1964
  136. Hermann Hesse 1877 – 1962
  137. Isaac Asimov 1919–1920 – 1992
  138. Tim Berners-Lee born 1955
  139. Ingmar Bergman 1918 – 2007
  140. Federico Fellini 1920 – 1993
  141. Mahathir Mohamad born 1925
  142. Boris Yeltsin 1931 – 2007
  143. Ali Khamenei 1939 – 2026
  144. Robin Williams 1951 – 2014
  145. Jackie Chan born 1954
  146. Kim Il-sung 1912 – 1994
  147. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1918 – 2008
  148. Jacques Chirac 1932 – 2019
  149. Guillermo Lasso born 1955
  150. Céline Dion born 1968

The 150 best known are listed.