Who Was Alive

Rosalind Franklin

British chemist, biophysicist, and X-ray crystallographer

Born 25 July 1920 · died 16 April 1958, aged 37

Who was alive at the same time as Rosalind Franklin?

  1. Thomas Edison
  2. Sigmund Freud
  3. Rabindranath Tagore
  4. Marie Curie
  5. Mahatma Gandhi
  6. Vladimir Lenin
  7. Winston Churchill
  8. Joseph Stalin
  9. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
  10. Albert Einstein
  11. Pablo Picasso
  12. Charlie Chaplin
  13. Adolf Hitler
  14. Salvador Dalí
  15. Ronald Reagan
  16. John F. Kennedy
  17. Nelson Mandela
  18. Rosalind Franklin
  19. Elizabeth II
  20. Martin Luther King Jr.
  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 Rosalind Franklin was born, Adolf Hitler was 31, Albert Einstein was 41, Ronald Reagan was 9, Vladimir Lenin was 50 and Nelson Mandela was 2.

When Rosalind Franklin died, Donald Trump was 11, Vladimir Putin was 5, Ronald Reagan was 47, Nelson Mandela was 39 and George W. Bush was 11.

Born during Rosalind Franklin’s lifetime: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush, Joe Biden, Elizabeth II, Martin Luther King Jr., Bill Gates and Marilyn Monroe.

Not quite contemporaries: Barack Obama was born 3 years after Rosalind Franklin died, Michael Jackson was born months after Rosalind Franklin died, Leo Tolstoy died 10 years before Rosalind Franklin was born and Mark Twain died 10 years before Rosalind Franklin was born.

Compare

All 934 contemporaries we track

  1. Donald Trump born 1946
  2. Adolf Hitler 1889 – 1945
  3. Albert Einstein 1879 – 1955
  4. Vladimir Putin born 1952
  5. Ronald Reagan 1911 – 2004
  6. Vladimir Lenin 1870 – 1924
  7. Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013
  8. Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948
  9. George W. Bush born 1946
  10. Joseph Stalin 1878 – 1953
  11. Joe Biden born 1942
  12. Pablo Picasso 1881 – 1973
  13. Winston Churchill 1874 – 1965
  14. Charlie Chaplin 1889 – 1977
  15. Elizabeth II 1926 – 2022
  16. Thomas Edison 1847 – 1931
  17. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 1879–1881 – 1938
  18. Sigmund Freud 1856 – 1939
  19. John F. Kennedy 1917 – 1963
  20. Marie Curie 1867 – 1934
  21. Martin Luther King Jr. 1929 – 1968
  22. Salvador Dalí 1904 – 1989
  23. Rabindranath Tagore 1861 – 1941
  24. Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1882 – 1945
  25. Bill Gates born 1955
  26. Franz Kafka 1883 – 1924
  27. Marilyn Monroe 1926 – 1962
  28. Pope Francis 1936 – 2025
  29. Mao Zedong 1893 – 1976
  30. Steve Jobs 1955 – 2011
  31. Che Guevara 1928 – 1967
  32. Bill Clinton born 1946
  33. Charles de Gaulle 1890 – 1970
  34. Angela Merkel born 1954
  35. Nikola Tesla 1856 – 1943
  36. Neil Armstrong 1930 – 2012
  37. François Hollande born 1954
  38. Walt Disney 1901 – 1966
  39. Elvis Presley 1935 – 1977
  40. George Orwell 1903 – 1950
  41. Ernest Hemingway 1899 – 1961
  42. Margaret Thatcher 1925 – 2013
  43. James Joyce 1882 – 1941
  44. John Paul II 1920 – 2005
  45. Gabriel García Márquez 1927 – 2014
  46. Fidel Castro 1926 – 2016
  47. J. R. R. Tolkien 1892 – 1973
  48. Albert Camus 1913 – 1960
  49. Yuri Gagarin 1934 – 1968
  50. Henry Ford 1863 – 1947
  51. Marlene Dietrich 1901 – 1992
  52. Mikhail Gorbachev 1931 – 2022
  53. Benito Mussolini 1883 – 1945
  54. Jean-Paul Sartre 1905 – 1980
  55. Stephen Hawking 1942 – 2018
  56. Le Corbusier 1887 – 1965
  57. Frida Kahlo 1907 – 1954
  58. Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997
  59. Jimmy Carter 1924 – 2024
  60. Benedict XVI 1927 – 2022
  61. Harry S. Truman 1884 – 1972
  62. Agatha Christie 1890 – 1976
  63. Hillary Clinton born 1947
  64. George H. W. Bush 1924 – 2018
  65. Jorge Luis Borges 1899 – 1986
  66. Sarah Bernhardt 1844 – 1923
  67. Nicolas Sarkozy born 1955
  68. Jawaharlal Nehru 1889 – 1964
  69. Marcel Proust 1871 – 1922
  70. Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890 – 1969
  71. Woodrow Wilson 1856 – 1924
  72. Roald Amundsen 1872 – c. 1928
  73. Alan Turing 1912 – 1954
  74. Richard Nixon 1913 – 1994
  75. Xi Jinping born 1953
  76. Rudyard Kipling 1865 – 1936
  77. Alfred Hitchcock 1899 – 1980
  78. Noam Chomsky born 1928
  79. Simone de Beauvoir 1908 – 1986
  80. Hugo Chávez 1954 – 2013
  81. George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950
  82. John Maynard Keynes 1883 – 1946
  83. Niels Bohr 1885 – 1962
  84. Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970
  85. Muammar Gaddafi 1942 – 2011
  86. Leon Trotsky 1879 – 1940
  87. John Lennon 1940 – 1980
  88. Bob Dylan born 1941
  89. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan born 1954
  90. Max Planck 1858 – 1947
  91. Arthur Conan Doyle 1859 – 1930
  92. Pelé 1940 – 2022
  93. Muhammad Ali 1942 – 2016
  94. Maxim Gorky 1868 – 1936
  95. Henri Matisse 1869 – 1954
  96. Frank Lloyd Wright 1867 – 1959
  97. Andy Warhol 1928 – 1987
  98. Louis Armstrong 1901 – 1971
  99. Kofi Annan 1938 – 2018
  100. Osama bin Laden 1957 – 2011
  101. Virginia Woolf 1882 – 1941
  102. Akira Kurosawa 1910 – 1998
  103. Lech Wałęsa born 1943
  104. Freddie Mercury 1946 – 1991
  105. Charles III born 1948
  106. Lyndon B. Johnson 1908 – 1973
  107. Gerald Ford 1913 – 2006
  108. Ernest Rutherford 1871 – 1937
  109. Leo XIV born 1955
  110. Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951
  111. Indira Gandhi 1917 – 1984
  112. Narendra Modi born 1950
  113. Huang Xianfan 1899 – 1982
  114. Enrico Fermi 1901 – 1954
  115. Naguib Mahfouz 1911 – 2006
  116. Aung San Suu Kyi born 1945
  117. Steven Spielberg born 1946
  118. Nikita Khrushchev 1894 – 1971
  119. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900 – 1944
  120. Anne Frank 1929 – 1945
  121. Saddam Hussein 1937 – 2006
  122. Benjamin Netanyahu born 1949
  123. H. G. Wells 1866 – 1946
  124. Helen Keller 1880 – 1968
  125. Tenzin Gyatso born 1935
  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. Bruce Lee 1940 – 1973
  132. Erwin Schrödinger 1887 – 1961
  133. Silvio Berlusconi 1936 – 2023
  134. Bob Marley 1945 – 1981
  135. Shinzō Abe 1954 – 2022
  136. Herbert Hoover 1874 – 1964
  137. Hermann Hesse 1877 – 1962
  138. Isaac Asimov 1919–1920 – 1992
  139. Tim Berners-Lee born 1955
  140. Ingmar Bergman 1918 – 2007
  141. Federico Fellini 1920 – 1993
  142. Mahathir Mohamad born 1925
  143. Anatole France 1844 – 1924
  144. Alexander Graham Bell 1847 – 1922
  145. Calvin Coolidge 1872 – 1933
  146. Boris Yeltsin 1931 – 2007
  147. Ali Khamenei 1939 – 2026
  148. Robin Williams 1951 – 2014
  149. Jackie Chan born 1954
  150. Kim Il-sung 1912 – 1994

The 150 best known are listed.