Who Was Alive
Ignaz Semmelweis
József Borsos / Albert Doctor, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Ignaz Semmelweis

Hungarian physician

Born 1 July 1818 · died 13 August 1865, aged 47
Also known as Ignatius Philipp Semmelweis

Who was alive at the same time as Ignaz Semmelweis?

  1. Thomas Jefferson, 1743 – 1826
  2. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749 – 1832
  3. Ludwig van Beethoven, c. 1770 – 1827
  4. Napoleon, 1769 – 1821
  5. Lord Byron, 1788 – 1824
  6. Alexander Pushkin, 1799 – 1837
  7. Victor Hugo, 1802 – 1885
  8. Hans Christian Andersen, 1805 – 1875
  9. Edgar Allan Poe, 1809 – 1849
  10. Abraham Lincoln, 1809 – 1865
  11. Charles Darwin, 1809 – 1882
  12. Charles Dickens, 1812 – 1870
  13. Karl Marx, 1818 – 1883
  14. Ignaz Semmelweis, 1818 – 1865
  15. Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1821 – 1881
  16. Leo Tolstoy, 1828 – 1910
  17. Mark Twain, 1835 – 1910
  18. Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844 – 1900
  19. Thomas Edison, 1847 – 1931
  20. Vincent van Gogh, 1853 – 1890
  21. Oscar Wilde, 1854 – 1900
  22. Sigmund Freud, 1856 – 1939
  23. Anton Chekhov, 1860 – 1904
  24. Rabindranath Tagore, 1861 – 1941

Drag across the timeline, or use the arrow keys, to see who was alive in any year and the age each person reached that year. Dashed lines mark world events. Faded ends mark uncertain dates.

When Ignaz Semmelweis was born, Karl Marx was under a year old, Abraham Lincoln was 9, Napoleon was 48, Charles Darwin was 9 and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was 68.

When Ignaz Semmelweis died, Karl Marx was 47, Leo Tolstoy was 36, Charles Darwin was 56, Victor Hugo was 63 and Vincent van Gogh was 12.

Born during Ignaz Semmelweis’s lifetime: Leo Tolstoy, Vincent van Gogh, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Edison, Sigmund Freud, Mark Twain and Rabindranath Tagore.

Not quite contemporaries: Albert Einstein was born about 14 years after Ignaz Semmelweis died, Vladimir Lenin was born about 5 years after Ignaz Semmelweis died, Mahatma Gandhi was born about 4 years after Ignaz Semmelweis died and Joseph Stalin was born about 13 years after Ignaz Semmelweis died.

What happened in Ignaz Semmelweis’s lifetime

Where Ignaz Semmelweis’s contemporaries were born

Ignaz Semmelweis is labelled; the others are the best-known people we track who lived at the same time. Each dot is a birthplace from Wikidata (80 of 81 placed); tap one to open that person.
Birthplaces as a list

Compare Ignaz Semmelweis

The 150 best-known contemporaries

773 of the people we track were surely alive at the same time as Ignaz Semmelweis. The 150 best known are listed here. See also everyone alive in 1842.

  1. Karl Marx 1818 – 1883
  2. Abraham Lincoln 1809 – 1865
  3. Napoleon 1769 – 1821
  4. Leo Tolstoy 1828 – 1910
  5. Charles Darwin 1809 – 1882
  6. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1749 – 1832
  7. Ludwig van Beethoven c. 1770 – 1827
  8. Victor Hugo 1802 – 1885
  9. Vincent van Gogh 1853 – 1890
  10. Fyodor Dostoevsky 1821 – 1881
  11. Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 – 1900
  12. Thomas Edison 1847 – 1931
  13. Sigmund Freud 1856 – 1939
  14. Mark Twain 1835 – 1910
  15. Charles Dickens 1812 – 1870
  16. Rabindranath Tagore 1861 – 1941
  17. Alexander Pushkin 1799 – 1837
  18. Hans Christian Andersen 1805 – 1875
  19. Anton Chekhov 1860 – 1904
  20. Thomas Jefferson 1743 – 1826
  21. Edgar Allan Poe 1809 – 1849
  22. Oscar Wilde 1854 – 1900
  23. Lord Byron 1788 – 1824
  24. Otto von Bismarck 1815 – 1898
  25. Nikola Tesla 1856 – 1943
  26. Louis Pasteur 1822 – 1895
  27. Richard Wagner 1813 – 1883
  28. Henry Ford 1863 – 1947
  29. Carl Friedrich Gauss 1777 – 1855
  30. Frédéric Chopin 1810 – 1849
  31. Friedrich Engels 1820 – 1895
  32. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1770 – 1831
  33. Sarah Bernhardt 1844 – 1923
  34. Alfred Nobel 1833 – 1896
  35. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 1840 – 1893
  36. Theodore Roosevelt 1858 – 1919
  37. Jules Verne 1828 – 1905
  38. Woodrow Wilson 1856 – 1924
  39. John Adams 1735 – 1826
  40. Francisco Goya 1746 – 1828
  41. George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950
  42. Max Planck 1858 – 1947
  43. Arthur Conan Doyle 1859 – 1930
  44. Michael Faraday 1791 – 1867
  45. Giuseppe Verdi 1813 – 1901
  46. Charles Baudelaire 1821 – 1867
  47. Dmitri Mendeleev 1834 – 1907
  48. Hokusai 1760 – 1849
  49. James Madison 1751 – 1836
  50. Honoré de Balzac 1799 – 1850
  51. Queen Victoria 1819 – 1901
  52. Simón Bolívar 1783 – 1830
  53. Arthur Schopenhauer 1788 – 1860
  54. Franz Schubert 1797 – 1828
  55. Alexandre Dumas 1802 – 1870
  56. Max Weber 1864 – 1920
  57. Henrik Ibsen 1828 – 1906
  58. Søren Kierkegaard 1813 – 1855
  59. Heinrich Heine 1797 – 1856
  60. John Quincy Adams 1767 – 1848
  61. Émile Zola 1840 – 1902
  62. Andrew Jackson 1767 – 1845
  63. David Hilbert 1862 – 1943
  64. James Clerk Maxwell 1831 – 1879
  65. William Blake 1757 – 1827
  66. Johannes Brahms 1833 – 1897
  67. Anatole France 1844 – 1924
  68. Alexander Graham Bell 1847 – 1922
  69. Octave Mirbeau 1848 – 1917
  70. James Watt 1736 – 1819
  71. Gustave Flaubert 1821 – 1880
  72. Ulysses S. Grant 1822 – 1885
  73. James Monroe 1758 – 1831
  74. Nikolai Gogol c. 1809 – c. 1852
  75. Lewis Carroll 1832 – 1898
  76. Wilhelm Röntgen 1845 – 1923
  77. Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 – 1882
  78. Claude Monet 1840 – 1926
  79. Guy de Maupassant 1850 – 1893
  80. Selma Lagerlöf 1858 – 1940
  81. Robert Louis Stevenson 1850 – 1894
  82. W. B. Yeats 1865 – 1939
  83. Ivan Turgenev 1818 – 1883
  84. Florence Nightingale 1820 – 1910
  85. Gustav Mahler 1860 – 1911
  86. John Stuart Mill 1806 – 1873
  87. Antonín Dvořák 1841 – 1904
  88. Walt Whitman 1819 – 1892
  89. James A. Garfield 1831 – 1881
  90. Emily Dickinson 1830 – 1886
  91. William Howard Taft 1857 – 1930
  92. Giacomo Puccini 1858 – 1924
  93. Martin Van Buren 1782 – 1862
  94. Grover Cleveland 1837 – 1908
  95. John Keats 1795 – 1821
  96. Andrew Johnson 1808 – 1875
  97. Henry David Thoreau 1817 – 1862
  98. Zachary Taylor 1784 – 1850
  99. James Buchanan 1791 – 1868
  100. James K. Polk 1795 – 1849
  101. Arthur Rimbaud 1854 – 1891
  102. John Tyler 1790 – 1862
  103. Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 – 1822
  104. Mikhail Bakunin 1814 – 1876
  105. William McKinley 1843 – 1901
  106. Alexander von Humboldt 1769 – 1859
  107. William Wordsworth 1770 – 1850
  108. Millard Fillmore 1800 – 1874
  109. L. L. Zamenhof 1859 – 1917
  110. William Henry Harrison 1773 – 1841
  111. Walter Scott 1771 – 1832
  112. Franklin Pierce 1804 – 1869
  113. Rutherford B. Hayes 1822 – 1893
  114. Paul Cézanne 1839 – 1906
  115. Henryk Sienkiewicz 1846 – 1916
  116. Benjamin Disraeli 1804 – 1881
  117. Taras Shevchenko 1814 – 1861
  118. George Eliot 1819 – 1880
  119. Henri Bergson 1859 – 1941
  120. Swami Vivekananda 1863 – 1902
  121. George Sand 1804 – 1876
  122. Stendhal 1783 – 1842
  123. James Prescott Joule 1818 – 1889
  124. Benjamin Harrison 1833 – 1901
  125. Hector Berlioz 1803 – 1869
  126. Charlotte Brontë 1816 – 1855
  127. Knut Hamsun 1859 – 1952
  128. Gregor Mendel 1822 – 1884
  129. Joseph Fourier 1768 – 1830
  130. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres 1780 – 1867
  131. Mary Shelley 1797 – 1851
  132. Auguste Comte 1798 – 1857
  133. Ada Lovelace 1815 – 1852
  134. Paul Gauguin 1848 – 1903
  135. Giuseppe Garibaldi 1807 – 1882
  136. Chester A. Arthur 1829 – 1886
  137. Maurice Maeterlinck 1862 – 1949
  138. Robert Schumann 1810 – 1856
  139. Emily Brontë 1818 – 1848
  140. Herman Melville 1819 – 1891
  141. Auguste Rodin 1840 – 1917
  142. Antoni Gaudí 1852 – 1926
  143. Henri Poincaré 1854 – 1912
  144. Pierre Curie 1859 – 1906
  145. Claude Debussy 1862 – 1918
  146. Wilhelm II 1859 – 1941
  147. Adam Mickiewicz 1798 – 1855
  148. Joseph Conrad 1857 – 1924
  149. Napoleon III 1808 – 1873
  150. Mikhail Lermontov 1814 – 1841