Who Was Alive

Who was alive in 1785?

99 of the people we track were surely alive in 1785. The best known are listed first, with the age each reached that year.

Born in 1785: Alessandro Manzoni.

  1. Napoleon16
  2. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe36
  3. George Washington53
  4. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart29
  5. Ludwig van Beethoven13–17
  6. Immanuel Kant61
  7. Thomas Jefferson42
  8. Adam Smith62
  9. Benjamin Franklin79
  10. Jane Austen10
  11. Carl Friedrich Gauss8
  12. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel15
  13. John Adams50
  14. Francisco Goya39
  15. Friedrich Schiller26
  16. Katsushika Hokusai25
  17. James Madison34
  18. Simón Bolívar2
  19. John Quincy Adams18
  20. Andrew Jackson18
  21. William Blake28
  22. James Watt49
  23. Joseph Haydn53
  24. James Monroe27
  25. Catherine II of Russia56
  26. Martin Van Buren3
  27. Zachary Taylor1
  28. Alexander von Humboldt16
  29. William Wordsworth15
  30. William Henry Harrison12
  31. Walter Scott14
  32. Stendhal2
  33. Thomas Paine48
  34. Marie Antoinette30
  35. Maximilien Robespierre27
  36. Joseph Fourier17
  37. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres5
  38. Antoine Lavoisier42
  39. Mary Wollstonecraft26
  40. Pierre-Simon Laplace36
  41. Louis XVI of France31
  42. Frederick II of Prussia73
  43. Edmund Burke56
  44. Robert Burns26
  45. Samuel Taylor Coleridge13
  46. André-Marie Ampère10
  47. Alessandro Volta40
  48. William Herschel47
  49. Edward Jenner36
  50. Johann Gottlieb Fichte23
  51. Novalis13
  52. John Dalton19
  53. Alexander I of Russia8
  54. Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck41
  55. Washington Irving2
  56. George III of Great Britain47
  57. Carl von Clausewitz5
  58. Alessandro Manzoniborn
  59. Giacomo Casanova60
  60. Marquis de Sade45
  61. Jeremy Bentham37
  62. Thomas Robert Malthus19
  63. Edward Gibbon48
  64. Horatio Nelson27
  65. Joseph-Louis Lagrange49
  66. Alexander Hamilton28
  67. Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington16
  68. Niccolò Paganini3
  69. Johann Gottfried Herder41
  70. Humphry Davy7
  71. Charles-Augustin de Coulomb49
  72. Hans Christian Ørsted8
  73. Gregory XVI20
  74. Wilhelm von Humboldt18
  75. David Ricardo13
  76. Isabelle de Charrière45
  77. Pius VII43
  78. William IV20
  79. Friedrich Hölderlin15
  80. Amedeo Avogadro9
  81. Pierre-Augustin de Beaumarchais53
  82. Klemens von Metternich12
  83. Carlo Goldoni78
  84. Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord31
  85. Paul I of Russia31
  86. Jacques-Louis David37
  87. George IV of the United Kingdom23
  88. François-Auguste-René de Chateaubriand17
  89. Joseph Priestley52
  90. Georges Danton26
  91. Leo XII25
  92. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling10
  93. E. T. A. Hoffmann9
  94. Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon78
  95. Thomas Young12
  96. Caspar David Friedrich11
  97. Pius VI68
  98. Henry Cavendish54
  99. Germaine de Staël19