Who Was Alive

William Faulkner

American writer

Born 25 September 1897 · died 6 July 1962, aged 64

Who was alive at the same time as William Faulkner?

  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. William Faulkner
  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 William Faulkner was born, Adolf Hitler was 8, Albert Einstein was 18, Vladimir Lenin was 27, Mahatma Gandhi was 27 and Leo Tolstoy was 69.

When William Faulkner died, Barack Obama was under a year old, Donald Trump was 16, Michael Jackson was 3, Vladimir Putin was 9 and Ronald Reagan was 51.

Born during William Faulkner’s lifetime: Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Michael Jackson, Vladimir Putin, Ronald Reagan, Nelson Mandela, George W. Bush and Joe Biden.

Not quite contemporaries: Karl Marx died 14 years before William Faulkner was born, Victor Hugo died 12 years before William Faulkner was born, Vincent van Gogh died 7 years before William Faulkner was born and Jimmy Wales was born 4 years after William Faulkner died.

Compare

All 1,079 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. Pope Francis 1936 – 2025
  35. Mao Zedong 1893 – 1976
  36. Steve Jobs 1955 – 2011
  37. Che Guevara 1928 – 1967
  38. Oscar Wilde 1854 – 1900
  39. Bill Clinton born 1946
  40. Charles de Gaulle 1890 – 1970
  41. Angela Merkel born 1954
  42. Otto von Bismarck 1815 – 1898
  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. Theodore Roosevelt 1858 – 1919
  78. Jawaharlal Nehru 1889 – 1964
  79. Marcel Proust 1871 – 1922
  80. Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890 – 1969
  81. Jules Verne 1828 – 1905
  82. Woodrow Wilson 1856 – 1924
  83. Rosa Luxemburg 1871 – 1919
  84. Roald Amundsen 1872 – c. 1928
  85. Alan Turing 1912 – 1954
  86. Richard Nixon 1913 – 1994
  87. Xi Jinping born 1953
  88. Rudyard Kipling 1865 – 1936
  89. Naruhito born 1960
  90. Alfred Hitchcock 1899 – 1980
  91. Noam Chomsky born 1928
  92. Simone de Beauvoir 1908 – 1986
  93. Hugo Chávez 1954 – 2013
  94. George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950
  95. John Maynard Keynes 1883 – 1946
  96. Niels Bohr 1885 – 1962
  97. Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970
  98. Muammar Gaddafi 1942 – 2011
  99. Leon Trotsky 1879 – 1940
  100. John Lennon 1940 – 1980
  101. Bob Dylan born 1941
  102. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan born 1954
  103. Max Planck 1858 – 1947
  104. Arthur Conan Doyle 1859 – 1930
  105. Pelé 1940 – 2022
  106. Muhammad Ali 1942 – 2016
  107. Maxim Gorky 1868 – 1936
  108. Henri Matisse 1869 – 1954
  109. Giuseppe Verdi 1813 – 1901
  110. Dmitri Mendeleev 1834 – 1907
  111. Frank Lloyd Wright 1867 – 1959
  112. Andy Warhol 1928 – 1987
  113. Louis Armstrong 1901 – 1971
  114. Kofi Annan 1938 – 2018
  115. Osama bin Laden 1957 – 2011
  116. Virginia Woolf 1882 – 1941
  117. Akira Kurosawa 1910 – 1998
  118. Lech Wałęsa born 1943
  119. Freddie Mercury 1946 – 1991
  120. Charles III born 1948
  121. Victoria 1819 – 1901
  122. Lyndon B. Johnson 1908 – 1973
  123. Gerald Ford 1913 – 2006
  124. Diego Maradona 1960 – 2020
  125. Ernest Rutherford 1871 – 1937
  126. Leo XIV born 1955
  127. Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951
  128. Indira Gandhi 1917 – 1984
  129. Narendra Modi born 1950
  130. Max Weber 1864 – 1920
  131. Huang Xianfan 1899 – 1982
  132. Enrico Fermi 1901 – 1954
  133. Naguib Mahfouz 1911 – 2006
  134. Aung San Suu Kyi born 1945
  135. Steven Spielberg born 1946
  136. Henrik Ibsen 1828 – 1906
  137. Nikita Khrushchev 1894 – 1971
  138. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900 – 1944
  139. Anne Frank 1929 – 1945
  140. Saddam Hussein 1937 – 2006
  141. Benjamin Netanyahu born 1949
  142. H. G. Wells 1866 – 1946
  143. Helen Keller 1880 – 1968
  144. Tenzin Gyatso born 1935
  145. Pablo Neruda 1904 – 1973
  146. Rafael Orozco Maestre 1954 – 1992
  147. Émile Zola 1840 – 1902
  148. Igor Stravinsky 1882 – 1971
  149. David Hilbert 1862 – 1943
  150. Thomas Mann 1875 – 1955

The 150 best known are listed.