Who Was Alive

Sylvia Plath

American poet and writer

Born 27 October 1932 · died 11 February 1963, aged 30

Who was alive at the same time as Sylvia Plath?

  1. Sigmund Freud
  2. Rabindranath Tagore
  3. Marie Curie
  4. Mahatma Gandhi
  5. Winston Churchill
  6. Joseph Stalin
  7. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
  8. Albert Einstein
  9. Pablo Picasso
  10. Charlie Chaplin
  11. Adolf Hitler
  12. Salvador Dalí
  13. Ronald Reagan
  14. John F. Kennedy
  15. Nelson Mandela
  16. Elizabeth II
  17. Martin Luther King Jr.
  18. Sylvia Plath
  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 Sylvia Plath was born, Adolf Hitler was 43, Albert Einstein was 53, Ronald Reagan was 21, Nelson Mandela was 14 and Mahatma Gandhi was 63.

When Sylvia Plath died, Barack Obama was 1, Donald Trump was 16, Michael Jackson was 4, Vladimir Putin was 10 and Ronald Reagan was 52.

Born during Sylvia Plath’s lifetime: Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Michael Jackson, Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush, Joe Biden, Bill Gates and Pope Francis.

Not quite contemporaries: Vladimir Lenin died 8 years before Sylvia Plath was born, Thomas Edison died about a year before Sylvia Plath was born, Franz Kafka died 8 years before Sylvia Plath was born and Jimmy Wales was born 3 years after Sylvia Plath died.

Compare

All 940 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. Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013
  9. Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948
  10. George W. Bush born 1946
  11. Joseph Stalin 1878 – 1953
  12. Joe Biden born 1942
  13. Pablo Picasso 1881 – 1973
  14. Winston Churchill 1874 – 1965
  15. Charlie Chaplin 1889 – 1977
  16. Elizabeth II 1926 – 2022
  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. Marilyn Monroe 1926 – 1962
  27. Pope Francis 1936 – 2025
  28. Mao Zedong 1893 – 1976
  29. Steve Jobs 1955 – 2011
  30. Che Guevara 1928 – 1967
  31. Bill Clinton born 1946
  32. Charles de Gaulle 1890 – 1970
  33. Angela Merkel born 1954
  34. Nikola Tesla 1856 – 1943
  35. Neil Armstrong 1930 – 2012
  36. François Hollande born 1954
  37. Walt Disney 1901 – 1966
  38. Elvis Presley 1935 – 1977
  39. George Orwell 1903 – 1950
  40. Ernest Hemingway 1899 – 1961
  41. Margaret Thatcher 1925 – 2013
  42. James Joyce 1882 – 1941
  43. John Paul II 1920 – 2005
  44. Gabriel García Márquez 1927 – 2014
  45. Fidel Castro 1926 – 2016
  46. J. R. R. Tolkien 1892 – 1973
  47. Albert Camus 1913 – 1960
  48. Yuri Gagarin 1934 – 1968
  49. Henry Ford 1863 – 1947
  50. Marlene Dietrich 1901 – 1992
  51. Mikhail Gorbachev 1931 – 2022
  52. Benito Mussolini 1883 – 1945
  53. Jean-Paul Sartre 1905 – 1980
  54. Stephen Hawking 1942 – 2018
  55. Le Corbusier 1887 – 1965
  56. Frida Kahlo 1907 – 1954
  57. Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997
  58. Jimmy Carter 1924 – 2024
  59. Benedict XVI 1927 – 2022
  60. Harry S. Truman 1884 – 1972
  61. Agatha Christie 1890 – 1976
  62. Hillary Clinton born 1947
  63. George H. W. Bush 1924 – 2018
  64. Jorge Luis Borges 1899 – 1986
  65. Nicolas Sarkozy born 1955
  66. Madonna born 1958
  67. Jawaharlal Nehru 1889 – 1964
  68. Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890 – 1969
  69. Alan Turing 1912 – 1954
  70. Richard Nixon 1913 – 1994
  71. Xi Jinping born 1953
  72. Rudyard Kipling 1865 – 1936
  73. Naruhito born 1960
  74. Alfred Hitchcock 1899 – 1980
  75. Noam Chomsky born 1928
  76. Simone de Beauvoir 1908 – 1986
  77. Hugo Chávez 1954 – 2013
  78. George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950
  79. John Maynard Keynes 1883 – 1946
  80. Niels Bohr 1885 – 1962
  81. Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970
  82. Muammar Gaddafi 1942 – 2011
  83. Leon Trotsky 1879 – 1940
  84. John Lennon 1940 – 1980
  85. Bob Dylan born 1941
  86. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan born 1954
  87. Max Planck 1858 – 1947
  88. Pelé 1940 – 2022
  89. Muhammad Ali 1942 – 2016
  90. Maxim Gorky 1868 – 1936
  91. Henri Matisse 1869 – 1954
  92. Frank Lloyd Wright 1867 – 1959
  93. Andy Warhol 1928 – 1987
  94. Louis Armstrong 1901 – 1971
  95. Kofi Annan 1938 – 2018
  96. Osama bin Laden 1957 – 2011
  97. Virginia Woolf 1882 – 1941
  98. Akira Kurosawa 1910 – 1998
  99. Lech Wałęsa born 1943
  100. Freddie Mercury 1946 – 1991
  101. Charles III born 1948
  102. Lyndon B. Johnson 1908 – 1973
  103. Gerald Ford 1913 – 2006
  104. Diego Maradona 1960 – 2020
  105. Ernest Rutherford 1871 – 1937
  106. Leo XIV born 1955
  107. Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951
  108. Indira Gandhi 1917 – 1984
  109. Narendra Modi born 1950
  110. Huang Xianfan 1899 – 1982
  111. Enrico Fermi 1901 – 1954
  112. Naguib Mahfouz 1911 – 2006
  113. Aung San Suu Kyi born 1945
  114. Steven Spielberg born 1946
  115. Nikita Khrushchev 1894 – 1971
  116. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900 – 1944
  117. Anne Frank 1929 – 1945
  118. Saddam Hussein 1937 – 2006
  119. Benjamin Netanyahu born 1949
  120. H. G. Wells 1866 – 1946
  121. Helen Keller 1880 – 1968
  122. Tenzin Gyatso born 1935
  123. Pablo Neruda 1904 – 1973
  124. Rafael Orozco Maestre 1954 – 1992
  125. Igor Stravinsky 1882 – 1971
  126. David Hilbert 1862 – 1943
  127. Thomas Mann 1875 – 1955
  128. Bruce Lee 1940 – 1973
  129. Erwin Schrödinger 1887 – 1961
  130. Silvio Berlusconi 1936 – 2023
  131. Bob Marley 1945 – 1981
  132. Shinzō Abe 1954 – 2022
  133. Herbert Hoover 1874 – 1964
  134. Hermann Hesse 1877 – 1962
  135. Isaac Asimov 1919–1920 – 1992
  136. Tim Berners-Lee born 1955
  137. Ingmar Bergman 1918 – 2007
  138. Federico Fellini 1920 – 1993
  139. Mahathir Mohamad born 1925
  140. Calvin Coolidge 1872 – 1933
  141. Boris Yeltsin 1931 – 2007
  142. Ali Khamenei 1939 – 2026
  143. Robin Williams 1951 – 2014
  144. Jackie Chan born 1954
  145. Kim Il-sung 1912 – 1994
  146. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1918 – 2008
  147. Jacques Chirac 1932 – 2019
  148. Guillermo Lasso born 1955
  149. T. S. Eliot 1888 – 1965
  150. Stanley Kubrick 1928 – 1999

The 150 best known are listed.