Who Was Alive

René Magritte

Belgian surrealist

Born 21 November 1898 · died 15 August 1967, aged 68

Who was alive at the same time as René Magritte?

  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. René Magritte
  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 René Magritte was born, Adolf Hitler was 9, Albert Einstein was 19, Vladimir Lenin was 28, Mahatma Gandhi was 29 and Leo Tolstoy was 70.

When René Magritte died, Barack Obama was 6, Donald Trump was 21, Michael Jackson was 8, Vladimir Putin was 14 and Ronald Reagan was 56.

Born during René Magritte’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 René Magritte was born, Vincent van Gogh died 8 years before René Magritte was born, Shakira was born 10 years after René Magritte died and Otto von Bismarck died months before René Magritte was born.

Compare

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

The 150 best known are listed.