Who Was Alive

Who was alive in 1778?

100 of the people we track were surely alive in 1778. The best known are listed first, with the age each reached that year.

Born in 1778: Humphry Davy.

Died in 1778: Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Carl Linnaeus.

  1. Napoleon9
  2. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe29
  3. George Washington46
  4. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart22
  5. Ludwig van Beethoven6–10
  6. Voltaire83 †
  7. Immanuel Kant54
  8. Jean-Jacques Rousseau66 †
  9. Thomas Jefferson35
  10. Adam Smith55
  11. Benjamin Franklin72
  12. Carl Linnaeus70 †
  13. Jane Austen3
  14. Carl Friedrich Gauss1
  15. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel8
  16. Leonhard Euler71
  17. John Adams43
  18. James Cook50
  19. Francisco Goya32
  20. Friedrich Schiller19
  21. Katsushika Hokusai18
  22. James Madison27
  23. John Quincy Adams11
  24. Andrew Jackson11
  25. William Blake21
  26. James Watt42
  27. Joseph Haydn46
  28. James Monroe20
  29. Catherine II of Russia49
  30. Denis Diderot65
  31. Alexander von Humboldt9
  32. William Wordsworth8
  33. William Henry Harrison5
  34. Walter Scott7
  35. Thomas Paine41
  36. Samuel Johnson69
  37. Marie Antoinette23
  38. Maximilien Robespierre20
  39. Joseph Fourier10
  40. Antoine Lavoisier35
  41. Mary Wollstonecraft19
  42. Pierre-Simon Laplace29
  43. Louis XVI of France24
  44. Frederick II of Prussia66
  45. Edmund Burke49
  46. Robert Burns19
  47. Samuel Taylor Coleridge6
  48. André-Marie Ampère3
  49. Alessandro Volta33
  50. Jean Le Rond d'Alembert61
  51. William Herschel40
  52. Edward Jenner29
  53. Johann Gottlieb Fichte16
  54. Novalis6
  55. John Dalton12
  56. Alexander I of Russia1
  57. Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck34
  58. George III of Great Britain40
  59. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing49
  60. Maria Theresa of Austria61
  61. Giacomo Casanova53
  62. Marquis de Sade38
  63. Jeremy Bentham30
  64. Thomas Robert Malthus12
  65. Edward Gibbon41
  66. Horatio Nelson20
  67. Joseph-Louis Lagrange42
  68. Alexander Hamilton21
  69. Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington9
  70. Johann Gottfried Herder34
  71. Humphry Davyborn
  72. Charles-Augustin de Coulomb42
  73. Hans Christian Ørsted1
  74. Gregory XVI13
  75. Wilhelm von Humboldt11
  76. David Ricardo6
  77. Isabelle de Charrière38
  78. Pius VII36
  79. William IV13
  80. Friedrich Hölderlin8
  81. Amedeo Avogadro2
  82. Pierre-Augustin de Beaumarchais46
  83. Klemens von Metternich5
  84. Carlo Goldoni71
  85. Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord24
  86. Paul I of Russia24
  87. Jacques-Louis David30
  88. George IV of the United Kingdom16
  89. François-Auguste-René de Chateaubriand10
  90. Joseph Priestley45
  91. Georges Danton19
  92. Leo XII18
  93. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling3
  94. E. T. A. Hoffmann2
  95. Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon71
  96. Thomas Young5
  97. Caspar David Friedrich4
  98. Pius VI61
  99. Henry Cavendish47
  100. Germaine de Staël12