Who Was Alive

C. S. Lewis

British writer, lay theologian, and scholar

Born 29 November 1898 · died 22 November 1963, aged 64

Who was alive at the same time as C. S. Lewis?

  1. Leo Tolstoy
  2. Mark Twain
  3. Friedrich Nietzsche
  4. Thomas Edison
  5. Sigmund Freud
  6. Mahatma Gandhi
  7. Vladimir Lenin
  8. Winston Churchill
  9. Joseph Stalin
  10. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
  11. Albert Einstein
  12. Pablo Picasso
  13. Charlie Chaplin
  14. Adolf Hitler
  15. C. S. Lewis
  16. Ronald Reagan
  17. Nelson Mandela
  18. Elizabeth II
  19. Joe Biden
  20. Donald Trump
  21. George W. Bush
  22. Vladimir Putin
  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 C. S. Lewis was born, Adolf Hitler was 9, Albert Einstein was 19, Vladimir Lenin was 28, Mahatma Gandhi was 29 and Leo Tolstoy was 70.

When C. S. Lewis died, Barack Obama was 2, Donald Trump was 17, Michael Jackson was 5, Vladimir Putin was 11 and Ronald Reagan was 52.

Born during C. S. Lewis’s lifetime: Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Michael Jackson, Vladimir Putin, Ronald Reagan, Nelson Mandela, George W. Bush and Joe Biden.

Not quite contemporaries: Victor Hugo died 13 years before C. S. Lewis was born, Vincent van Gogh died 8 years before C. S. Lewis was born, Jimmy Wales was born 3 years after C. S. Lewis died and Shakira was born 14 years after C. S. Lewis died.

Compare

All 1,092 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. Vladimir Lenin 1870 – 1924
  9. Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013
  10. Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948
  11. Leo Tolstoy 1828 – 1910
  12. George W. Bush born 1946
  13. Joseph Stalin 1878 – 1953
  14. Joe Biden born 1942
  15. Pablo Picasso 1881 – 1973
  16. Winston Churchill 1874 – 1965
  17. Charlie Chaplin 1889 – 1977
  18. Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 – 1900
  19. Elizabeth II 1926 – 2022
  20. Thomas Edison 1847 – 1931
  21. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 1879–1881 – 1938
  22. Mark Twain 1835 – 1910
  23. Sigmund Freud 1856 – 1939
  24. John F. Kennedy 1917 – 1963
  25. Marie Curie 1867 – 1934
  26. Martin Luther King Jr. 1929 – 1968
  27. Salvador Dalí 1904 – 1989
  28. Rabindranath Tagore 1861 – 1941
  29. Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1882 – 1945
  30. Bill Gates born 1955
  31. Franz Kafka 1883 – 1924
  32. Anton Chekhov 1860 – 1904
  33. Marilyn Monroe 1926 – 1962
  34. Pope Francis 1936 – 2025
  35. Mao Zedong 1893 – 1976
  36. Steve Jobs 1955 – 2011
  37. Che Guevara 1928 – 1967
  38. Oscar Wilde 1854 – 1900
  39. Bill Clinton born 1946
  40. Charles de Gaulle 1890 – 1970
  41. Angela Merkel born 1954
  42. Nikola Tesla 1856 – 1943
  43. Neil Armstrong 1930 – 2012
  44. François Hollande born 1954
  45. Walt Disney 1901 – 1966
  46. Elvis Presley 1935 – 1977
  47. George Orwell 1903 – 1950
  48. Ernest Hemingway 1899 – 1961
  49. Margaret Thatcher 1925 – 2013
  50. James Joyce 1882 – 1941
  51. John Paul II 1920 – 2005
  52. Gabriel García Márquez 1927 – 2014
  53. Fidel Castro 1926 – 2016
  54. J. R. R. Tolkien 1892 – 1973
  55. Albert Camus 1913 – 1960
  56. Yuri Gagarin 1934 – 1968
  57. Henry Ford 1863 – 1947
  58. Marlene Dietrich 1901 – 1992
  59. Mikhail Gorbachev 1931 – 2022
  60. Benito Mussolini 1883 – 1945
  61. Jean-Paul Sartre 1905 – 1980
  62. Stephen Hawking 1942 – 2018
  63. Le Corbusier 1887 – 1965
  64. Frida Kahlo 1907 – 1954
  65. Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997
  66. Jimmy Carter 1924 – 2024
  67. Benedict XVI 1927 – 2022
  68. Harry S. Truman 1884 – 1972
  69. Agatha Christie 1890 – 1976
  70. Hillary Clinton born 1947
  71. George H. W. Bush 1924 – 2018
  72. Jorge Luis Borges 1899 – 1986
  73. Sarah Bernhardt 1844 – 1923
  74. Nicolas Sarkozy born 1955
  75. Madonna born 1958
  76. Theodore Roosevelt 1858 – 1919
  77. Jawaharlal Nehru 1889 – 1964
  78. Marcel Proust 1871 – 1922
  79. Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890 – 1969
  80. Jules Verne 1828 – 1905
  81. Woodrow Wilson 1856 – 1924
  82. Rosa Luxemburg 1871 – 1919
  83. Roald Amundsen 1872 – c. 1928
  84. Alan Turing 1912 – 1954
  85. Richard Nixon 1913 – 1994
  86. Xi Jinping born 1953
  87. Rudyard Kipling 1865 – 1936
  88. Naruhito born 1960
  89. Alfred Hitchcock 1899 – 1980
  90. Noam Chomsky born 1928
  91. Simone de Beauvoir 1908 – 1986
  92. Hugo Chávez 1954 – 2013
  93. George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950
  94. John Maynard Keynes 1883 – 1946
  95. Niels Bohr 1885 – 1962
  96. Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970
  97. Muammar Gaddafi 1942 – 2011
  98. Leon Trotsky 1879 – 1940
  99. John Lennon 1940 – 1980
  100. Bob Dylan born 1941
  101. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan born 1954
  102. Max Planck 1858 – 1947
  103. Arthur Conan Doyle 1859 – 1930
  104. Pelé 1940 – 2022
  105. Muhammad Ali 1942 – 2016
  106. Maxim Gorky 1868 – 1936
  107. Henri Matisse 1869 – 1954
  108. Giuseppe Verdi 1813 – 1901
  109. Dmitri Mendeleev 1834 – 1907
  110. Frank Lloyd Wright 1867 – 1959
  111. Andy Warhol 1928 – 1987
  112. Louis Armstrong 1901 – 1971
  113. Kofi Annan 1938 – 2018
  114. Osama bin Laden 1957 – 2011
  115. Virginia Woolf 1882 – 1941
  116. Akira Kurosawa 1910 – 1998
  117. Lech Wałęsa born 1943
  118. Freddie Mercury 1946 – 1991
  119. Charles III born 1948
  120. Victoria 1819 – 1901
  121. Lyndon B. Johnson 1908 – 1973
  122. Gerald Ford 1913 – 2006
  123. Diego Maradona 1960 – 2020
  124. Ernest Rutherford 1871 – 1937
  125. Leo XIV born 1955
  126. Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951
  127. Indira Gandhi 1917 – 1984
  128. Narendra Modi born 1950
  129. Rafael Correa born 1963
  130. Max Weber 1864 – 1920
  131. Huang Xianfan 1899 – 1982
  132. Enrico Fermi 1901 – 1954
  133. Naguib Mahfouz 1911 – 2006
  134. Aung San Suu Kyi born 1945
  135. Steven Spielberg born 1946
  136. Henrik Ibsen 1828 – 1906
  137. Nikita Khrushchev 1894 – 1971
  138. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900 – 1944
  139. Anne Frank 1929 – 1945
  140. Saddam Hussein 1937 – 2006
  141. Benjamin Netanyahu born 1949
  142. H. G. Wells 1866 – 1946
  143. Helen Keller 1880 – 1968
  144. Tenzin Gyatso born 1935
  145. Pablo Neruda 1904 – 1973
  146. Rafael Orozco Maestre 1954 – 1992
  147. Émile Zola 1840 – 1902
  148. Igor Stravinsky 1882 – 1971
  149. David Hilbert 1862 – 1943
  150. Thomas Mann 1875 – 1955

The 150 best known are listed.