Who Was Alive

Henri Matisse

French artist

Born 31 December 1869 · died 3 November 1954, aged 84

Who was alive at the same time as Henri Matisse?

  1. Victor Hugo
  2. Charles Darwin
  3. Karl Marx
  4. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  5. Leo Tolstoy
  6. Friedrich Nietzsche
  7. Thomas Edison
  8. Vincent van Gogh
  9. Mahatma Gandhi
  10. Henri Matisse
  11. Vladimir Lenin
  12. Winston Churchill
  13. Joseph Stalin
  14. Albert Einstein
  15. Pablo Picasso
  16. Charlie Chaplin
  17. Adolf Hitler
  18. Ronald Reagan
  19. Nelson Mandela
  20. Elizabeth II
  21. Joe Biden
  22. Donald Trump
  23. George W. Bush
  24. Vladimir Putin
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 Henri Matisse was born, Karl Marx was 51, Mahatma Gandhi was under a year old, Leo Tolstoy was 41, Charles Darwin was 60 and Victor Hugo was 67.

When Henri Matisse died, Donald Trump was 8, Albert Einstein was 75, Vladimir Putin was 2, Ronald Reagan was 43 and Nelson Mandela was 36.

Born during Henri Matisse’s lifetime: Donald Trump, Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Vladimir Putin, Ronald Reagan, Vladimir Lenin, Nelson Mandela and George W. Bush.

Not quite contemporaries: Barack Obama was born 7 years after Henri Matisse died, Michael Jackson was born 4 years after Henri Matisse died, Abraham Lincoln died 4 years before Henri Matisse was born and Bill Gates was born about a year after Henri Matisse died.

Compare

All 1,056 contemporaries we track

  1. Donald Trump born 1946
  2. Adolf Hitler 1889 – 1945
  3. Albert Einstein 1879 – 1955
  4. Vladimir Putin born 1952
  5. Karl Marx 1818 – 1883
  6. Ronald Reagan 1911 – 2004
  7. Vladimir Lenin 1870 – 1924
  8. Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013
  9. Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948
  10. Leo Tolstoy 1828 – 1910
  11. George W. Bush born 1946
  12. Charles Darwin 1809 – 1882
  13. Joseph Stalin 1878 – 1953
  14. Joe Biden born 1942
  15. Victor Hugo 1802 – 1885
  16. Vincent van Gogh 1853 – 1890
  17. Pablo Picasso 1881 – 1973
  18. Winston Churchill 1874 – 1965
  19. Charlie Chaplin 1889 – 1977
  20. Fyodor Dostoyevsky 1821 – 1881
  21. Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 – 1900
  22. Elizabeth II 1926 – 2022
  23. Thomas Edison 1847 – 1931
  24. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 1879–1881 – 1938
  25. Mark Twain 1835 – 1910
  26. Sigmund Freud 1856 – 1939
  27. Charles Dickens 1812 – 1870
  28. John F. Kennedy 1917 – 1963
  29. Marie Curie 1867 – 1934
  30. Martin Luther King Jr. 1929 – 1968
  31. Salvador Dalí 1904 – 1989
  32. Rabindranath Tagore 1861 – 1941
  33. Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1882 – 1945
  34. Hans Christian Andersen 1805 – 1875
  35. Franz Kafka 1883 – 1924
  36. Anton Chekhov 1860 – 1904
  37. Marilyn Monroe 1926 – 1962
  38. Pope Francis 1936 – 2025
  39. Mao Zedong 1893 – 1976
  40. Che Guevara 1928 – 1967
  41. Oscar Wilde 1854 – 1900
  42. Bill Clinton born 1946
  43. Charles de Gaulle 1890 – 1970
  44. Angela Merkel born 1954
  45. Otto von Bismarck 1815 – 1898
  46. Nikola Tesla 1856 – 1943
  47. Neil Armstrong 1930 – 2012
  48. François Hollande born 1954
  49. Walt Disney 1901 – 1966
  50. Elvis Presley 1935 – 1977
  51. Louis Pasteur 1822 – 1895
  52. George Orwell 1903 – 1950
  53. Ernest Hemingway 1899 – 1961
  54. Margaret Thatcher 1925 – 2013
  55. James Joyce 1882 – 1941
  56. John Paul II 1920 – 2005
  57. Gabriel García Márquez 1927 – 2014
  58. Richard Wagner 1813 – 1883
  59. Fidel Castro 1926 – 2016
  60. J. R. R. Tolkien 1892 – 1973
  61. Albert Camus 1913 – 1960
  62. Yuri Gagarin 1934 – 1968
  63. Henry Ford 1863 – 1947
  64. Marlene Dietrich 1901 – 1992
  65. Mikhail Gorbachev 1931 – 2022
  66. Benito Mussolini 1883 – 1945
  67. Jean-Paul Sartre 1905 – 1980
  68. Stephen Hawking 1942 – 2018
  69. Friedrich Engels 1820 – 1895
  70. Le Corbusier 1887 – 1965
  71. Frida Kahlo 1907 – 1954
  72. Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997
  73. Jimmy Carter 1924 – 2024
  74. Benedict XVI 1927 – 2022
  75. Harry S. Truman 1884 – 1972
  76. Agatha Christie 1890 – 1976
  77. Hillary Clinton born 1947
  78. George H. W. Bush 1924 – 2018
  79. Jorge Luis Borges 1899 – 1986
  80. Sarah Bernhardt 1844 – 1923
  81. Alfred Nobel 1833 – 1896
  82. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 1840 – 1893
  83. Theodore Roosevelt 1858 – 1919
  84. Jawaharlal Nehru 1889 – 1964
  85. Marcel Proust 1871 – 1922
  86. Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890 – 1969
  87. Jules Verne 1828 – 1905
  88. Woodrow Wilson 1856 – 1924
  89. Rosa Luxemburg 1871 – 1919
  90. Roald Amundsen 1872 – c. 1928
  91. Alan Turing 1912 – 1954
  92. Richard Nixon 1913 – 1994
  93. Xi Jinping born 1953
  94. Rudyard Kipling 1865 – 1936
  95. Alfred Hitchcock 1899 – 1980
  96. Noam Chomsky born 1928
  97. Simone de Beauvoir 1908 – 1986
  98. Hugo Chávez 1954 – 2013
  99. George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950
  100. John Maynard Keynes 1883 – 1946
  101. Niels Bohr 1885 – 1962
  102. Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970
  103. Muammar Gaddafi 1942 – 2011
  104. Leon Trotsky 1879 – 1940
  105. John Lennon 1940 – 1980
  106. Bob Dylan born 1941
  107. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan born 1954
  108. Max Planck 1858 – 1947
  109. Arthur Conan Doyle 1859 – 1930
  110. Pelé 1940 – 2022
  111. Muhammad Ali 1942 – 2016
  112. Maxim Gorky 1868 – 1936
  113. Giuseppe Verdi 1813 – 1901
  114. Dmitri Mendeleev 1834 – 1907
  115. Frank Lloyd Wright 1867 – 1959
  116. Andy Warhol 1928 – 1987
  117. Louis Armstrong 1901 – 1971
  118. Kofi Annan 1938 – 2018
  119. Virginia Woolf 1882 – 1941
  120. Akira Kurosawa 1910 – 1998
  121. Lech Wałęsa born 1943
  122. Freddie Mercury 1946 – 1991
  123. Charles III born 1948
  124. Victoria 1819 – 1901
  125. Lyndon B. Johnson 1908 – 1973
  126. Gerald Ford 1913 – 2006
  127. Alexandre Dumas 1802 – 1870
  128. Ernest Rutherford 1871 – 1937
  129. Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951
  130. Indira Gandhi 1917 – 1984
  131. Narendra Modi born 1950
  132. Max Weber 1864 – 1920
  133. Huang Xianfan 1899 – 1982
  134. Enrico Fermi 1901 – 1954
  135. Naguib Mahfouz 1911 – 2006
  136. Aung San Suu Kyi born 1945
  137. Steven Spielberg born 1946
  138. Henrik Ibsen 1828 – 1906
  139. Nikita Khrushchev 1894 – 1971
  140. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900 – 1944
  141. Anne Frank 1929 – 1945
  142. Saddam Hussein 1937 – 2006
  143. Benjamin Netanyahu born 1949
  144. H. G. Wells 1866 – 1946
  145. Helen Keller 1880 – 1968
  146. Tenzin Gyatso born 1935
  147. Pablo Neruda 1904 – 1973
  148. Rafael Orozco Maestre 1954 – 1992
  149. Émile Zola 1840 – 1902
  150. Igor Stravinsky 1882 – 1971

The 150 best known are listed.