Who Was Alive

Joseph Priestley

English chemist, theologian, educator, and political theorist

Born 13 March 1733 (Julian calendar) · died 6 February 1804, aged 70

Who was alive at the same time as Joseph Priestley?

  1. Johann Sebastian Bach
  2. Voltaire
  3. Benjamin Franklin
  4. Leonhard Euler
  5. Carl Linnaeus
  6. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  7. Adam Smith
  8. Immanuel Kant
  9. James Cook
  10. George Washington
  11. Joseph Priestley
  12. John Adams
  13. Thomas Jefferson
  14. Francisco Goya
  15. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  16. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  17. Ludwig van Beethoven
  18. Napoleon
  19. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
  20. Jane Austen
  21. Carl Friedrich Gauss
  22. Lord Byron
  23. Alexander Pushkin
  24. Victor Hugo
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 Joseph Priestley was born, George Washington was 1, Johann Sebastian Bach was 47, Voltaire was 38, Immanuel Kant was 8 and Jean-Jacques Rousseau was 20.

When Joseph Priestley died, Napoleon was 34, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was 54, Victor Hugo was 1, Immanuel Kant was 79 and Alexander Pushkin was 4.

Born during Joseph Priestley’s lifetime: Napoleon, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Victor Hugo, Alexander Pushkin, Thomas Jefferson and Lord Byron.

Not quite contemporaries: Karl Marx was born 14 years after Joseph Priestley died, Isaac Newton died 6 years before Joseph Priestley was born, Abraham Lincoln was born 5 years after Joseph Priestley died and Charles Darwin was born 5 years after Joseph Priestley died.

Compare

All 158 contemporaries we track

  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. Victor Hugo 1802 – 1885
  7. Johann Sebastian Bach 1685 – 1750
  8. Voltaire 1694 – 1778
  9. Immanuel Kant 1724 – 1804
  10. Alexander Pushkin 1799 – 1837
  11. Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712 – 1778
  12. Thomas Jefferson 1743 – 1826
  13. Adam Smith 1723 – 1790
  14. Lord Byron 1788 – 1824
  15. Benjamin Franklin 1706 – 1790
  16. Carl Linnaeus 1707 – 1778
  17. Jane Austen 1775 – 1817
  18. Carl Friedrich Gauss 1777 – 1855
  19. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1770 – 1831
  20. Leonhard Euler 1707 – 1783
  21. John Adams 1735 – 1826
  22. James Cook 1728 – 1779
  23. Francisco Goya 1746 – 1828
  24. Friedrich Schiller 1759 – 1805
  25. Michael Faraday 1791 – 1867
  26. Katsushika Hokusai 1760 – 1849
  27. James Madison 1751 – 1836
  28. Honoré de Balzac 1799 – 1850
  29. Simón Bolívar 1783 – 1830
  30. Arthur Schopenhauer 1788 – 1860
  31. Alexandre Dumas 1802 – 1870
  32. Franz Schubert 1797 – 1828
  33. Heinrich Heine 1797 – 1856
  34. Antonio Vivaldi 1678 – 1741
  35. John Quincy Adams 1767 – 1848
  36. Andrew Jackson 1767 – 1845
  37. Jonathan Swift 1667 – 1745
  38. William Blake 1757 – 1827
  39. George Frideric Handel 1685 – 1759
  40. Montesquieu 1689 – 1755
  41. James Watt 1736 – 1819
  42. David Hume 1711 – 1776
  43. Joseph Haydn 1732 – 1809
  44. James Monroe 1758 – 1831
  45. Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 – 1882
  46. Catherine II of Russia 1729 – 1796
  47. Denis Diderot 1713 – 1784
  48. Martin Van Buren 1782 – 1862
  49. Zachary Taylor 1784 – 1850
  50. James Buchanan 1791 – 1868
  51. John Keats 1795 – 1821
  52. James K. Polk 1795 – 1849
  53. John Tyler 1790 – 1862
  54. Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 – 1822
  55. Alexander von Humboldt 1769 – 1859
  56. William Wordsworth 1770 – 1850
  57. Millard Fillmore 1800 – 1874
  58. William Henry Harrison 1773 – 1841
  59. Walter Scott 1771 – 1832
  60. Stendhal 1783 – 1842
  61. Thomas Paine 1737 – 1809
  62. Hector Berlioz 1803 – 1869
  63. Samuel Johnson 1709 – 1784
  64. Marie Antoinette 1755 – 1793
  65. Maximilien Robespierre 1758 – 1794
  66. Joseph Fourier 1768 – 1830
  67. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres 1780 – 1867
  68. Mary Shelley 1797 – 1851
  69. Auguste Comte 1798 – 1857
  70. Antoine Lavoisier 1743 – 1794
  71. Mary Wollstonecraft 1759 – 1797
  72. Adam Mickiewicz 1798 – 1855
  73. Pierre-Simon Laplace 1749 – 1827
  74. Louis XVI of France 1754 – 1793
  75. Frederick II of Prussia 1712 – 1786
  76. Edmund Burke 1729 – 1797
  77. Robert Burns 1759 – 1796
  78. Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772 – 1834
  79. Alexander Pope 1688 – 1744
  80. Eugène Delacroix 1798 – 1863
  81. André-Marie Ampère 1775 – 1836
  82. Thomas Carlyle 1795 – 1881
  83. Alessandro Volta 1745 – 1827
  84. Jean Le Rond d'Alembert 1717 – 1783
  85. William Herschel 1738 – 1822
  86. Edward Jenner 1749 – 1823
  87. Johann Gottlieb Fichte 1762 – 1814
  88. Novalis 1772 – 1801
  89. Charles Babbage 1791 – 1871
  90. John Dalton 1766 – 1844
  91. Giacomo Leopardi 1798 – 1837
  92. Alexander I of Russia 1777 – 1825
  93. George Berkeley 1685 – 1753
  94. Mikhail Lomonosov 1711 – 1765
  95. Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck 1744 – 1829
  96. Washington Irving 1783 – 1859
  97. Alphonse de Lamartine 1790 – 1869
  98. Pius IX 1792 – 1878
  99. George III of Great Britain 1738 – 1820
  100. Carl von Clausewitz 1780 – 1831
  101. Alessandro Manzoni 1785 – 1873
  102. Gioachino Rossini 1792 – 1868
  103. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing 1729 – 1781
  104. Louis XV of France 1710 – 1774
  105. Maria Theresa of Austria 1717 – 1780
  106. Giacomo Casanova 1725 – 1798
  107. Marquis de Sade 1740 – 1814
  108. Jeremy Bentham 1748 – 1832
  109. Thomas Robert Malthus 1766 – 1834
  110. Nicholas I of Russia 1796 – 1855
  111. Edward Gibbon 1737 – 1794
  112. Horatio Nelson 1758 – 1805
  113. Joseph-Louis Lagrange 1736 – 1813
  114. Alexander Hamilton 1757 – 1804
  115. Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington 1769 – 1852
  116. Niccolò Paganini 1782 – 1840
  117. Georg Simon Ohm 1789 – 1854
  118. Johann Gottfried Herder 1744 – 1803
  119. Humphry Davy 1778 – 1829
  120. Charles-Augustin de Coulomb 1736 – 1806
  121. Shaka Zulu 1785–1789 – 1828
  122. Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky 1792 – 1856
  123. Edmond Halley 1656 – 1742
  124. Hans Christian Ørsted 1777 – 1851
  125. Anders Celsius 1701 – 1744
  126. Gregory XVI 1765 – 1846
  127. Wilhelm von Humboldt 1767 – 1835
  128. David Ricardo 1772 – 1823
  129. Samuel Finley Breese Morse 1791 – 1872
  130. Niels Henrik Abel 1802 – 1829
  131. Isabelle de Charrière 1740 – 1805
  132. Pius VII 1742 – 1823
  133. William IV 1765 – 1837
  134. Friedrich Hölderlin 1770 – 1843
  135. Amedeo Avogadro 1776 – 1856
  136. Prosper Mérimée 1803 – 1870
  137. Pierre-Augustin de Beaumarchais 1732 – 1799
  138. Klemens von Metternich 1773 – 1859
  139. Carlo Goldoni 1707 – 1793
  140. Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord 1754 – 1839
  141. Paul I of Russia 1754 – 1801
  142. Jacques-Louis David 1748 – 1825
  143. George IV of the United Kingdom 1762 – 1830
  144. François-Auguste-René de Chateaubriand 1768 – 1848
  145. James Fenimore Cooper 1789 – 1851
  146. Georges Danton 1759 – 1794
  147. Leo XII 1760 – 1829
  148. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling 1775 – 1854
  149. E. T. A. Hoffmann 1776 – 1822
  150. Wilhelm I 1797 – 1888

The 150 best known are listed.