Who Was Alive

James Dean

American actor

Born 8 February 1931 · died 30 September 1955, aged 24

Who was alive at the same time as James Dean?

  1. Thomas Edison
  2. Sigmund Freud
  3. Rabindranath Tagore
  4. Marie Curie
  5. Mahatma Gandhi
  6. Winston Churchill
  7. Joseph Stalin
  8. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
  9. Albert Einstein
  10. Pablo Picasso
  11. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
  12. Charlie Chaplin
  13. Adolf Hitler
  14. Salvador Dalí
  15. Ronald Reagan
  16. John F. Kennedy
  17. Nelson Mandela
  18. Elizabeth II
  19. Martin Luther King Jr.
  20. James Dean
  21. Joe Biden
  22. Donald Trump
  23. George W. Bush
  24. Vladimir Putin
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 James Dean was born, Adolf Hitler was 41, Albert Einstein was 51, Ronald Reagan was 20, Nelson Mandela was 12 and Mahatma Gandhi was 61.

When James Dean died, Donald Trump was 9, Vladimir Putin was 2, Ronald Reagan was 44, Nelson Mandela was 37 and George W. Bush was 9.

Born during James Dean’s lifetime: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush, Joe Biden, Pope Francis, Steve Jobs, Bill Clinton and Angela Merkel.

Not quite contemporaries: Barack Obama was born 6 years after James Dean died, Michael Jackson was born 3 years after James Dean died, Vladimir Lenin died 7 years before James Dean was born and Bill Gates was born months after James Dean died.

Compare

All 859 contemporaries we track

  1. Donald Trump born 1946
  2. Adolf Hitler 1889 – 1945
  3. Albert Einstein 1879 – 1955
  4. Vladimir Putin born 1952
  5. Ronald Reagan 1911 – 2004
  6. Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013
  7. Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948
  8. George W. Bush born 1946
  9. Joseph Stalin 1878 – 1953
  10. Joe Biden born 1942
  11. Pablo Picasso 1881 – 1973
  12. Winston Churchill 1874 – 1965
  13. Charlie Chaplin 1889 – 1977
  14. Elizabeth II 1926 – 2022
  15. Thomas Edison 1847 – 1931
  16. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 1879–1881 – 1938
  17. Sigmund Freud 1856 – 1939
  18. John F. Kennedy 1917 – 1963
  19. Marie Curie 1867 – 1934
  20. Martin Luther King Jr. 1929 – 1968
  21. Salvador Dalí 1904 – 1989
  22. Rabindranath Tagore 1861 – 1941
  23. Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1882 – 1945
  24. Marilyn Monroe 1926 – 1962
  25. Pope Francis 1936 – 2025
  26. Mao Zedong 1893 – 1976
  27. Steve Jobs 1955 – 2011
  28. Che Guevara 1928 – 1967
  29. Bill Clinton born 1946
  30. Charles de Gaulle 1890 – 1970
  31. Angela Merkel born 1954
  32. Nikola Tesla 1856 – 1943
  33. Neil Armstrong 1930 – 2012
  34. François Hollande born 1954
  35. Walt Disney 1901 – 1966
  36. Elvis Presley 1935 – 1977
  37. George Orwell 1903 – 1950
  38. Ernest Hemingway 1899 – 1961
  39. Margaret Thatcher 1925 – 2013
  40. James Joyce 1882 – 1941
  41. John Paul II 1920 – 2005
  42. Gabriel García Márquez 1927 – 2014
  43. Fidel Castro 1926 – 2016
  44. J. R. R. Tolkien 1892 – 1973
  45. Albert Camus 1913 – 1960
  46. Yuri Gagarin 1934 – 1968
  47. Henry Ford 1863 – 1947
  48. Marlene Dietrich 1901 – 1992
  49. Mikhail Gorbachev 1931 – 2022
  50. Benito Mussolini 1883 – 1945
  51. Jean-Paul Sartre 1905 – 1980
  52. Stephen Hawking 1942 – 2018
  53. Le Corbusier 1887 – 1965
  54. Frida Kahlo 1907 – 1954
  55. Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997
  56. Jimmy Carter 1924 – 2024
  57. Benedict XVI 1927 – 2022
  58. Harry S. Truman 1884 – 1972
  59. Agatha Christie 1890 – 1976
  60. Hillary Clinton born 1947
  61. George H. W. Bush 1924 – 2018
  62. Jorge Luis Borges 1899 – 1986
  63. Nicolas Sarkozy born 1955
  64. Jawaharlal Nehru 1889 – 1964
  65. Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890 – 1969
  66. Alan Turing 1912 – 1954
  67. Richard Nixon 1913 – 1994
  68. Xi Jinping born 1953
  69. Rudyard Kipling 1865 – 1936
  70. Alfred Hitchcock 1899 – 1980
  71. Noam Chomsky born 1928
  72. Simone de Beauvoir 1908 – 1986
  73. Hugo Chávez 1954 – 2013
  74. George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950
  75. John Maynard Keynes 1883 – 1946
  76. Niels Bohr 1885 – 1962
  77. Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970
  78. Muammar Gaddafi 1942 – 2011
  79. Leon Trotsky 1879 – 1940
  80. John Lennon 1940 – 1980
  81. Bob Dylan born 1941
  82. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan born 1954
  83. Max Planck 1858 – 1947
  84. Pelé 1940 – 2022
  85. Muhammad Ali 1942 – 2016
  86. Maxim Gorky 1868 – 1936
  87. Henri Matisse 1869 – 1954
  88. Frank Lloyd Wright 1867 – 1959
  89. Andy Warhol 1928 – 1987
  90. Louis Armstrong 1901 – 1971
  91. Kofi Annan 1938 – 2018
  92. Virginia Woolf 1882 – 1941
  93. Akira Kurosawa 1910 – 1998
  94. Lech Wałęsa born 1943
  95. Freddie Mercury 1946 – 1991
  96. Charles III born 1948
  97. Lyndon B. Johnson 1908 – 1973
  98. Gerald Ford 1913 – 2006
  99. Ernest Rutherford 1871 – 1937
  100. Leo XIV born 1955
  101. Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951
  102. Indira Gandhi 1917 – 1984
  103. Narendra Modi born 1950
  104. Huang Xianfan 1899 – 1982
  105. Enrico Fermi 1901 – 1954
  106. Naguib Mahfouz 1911 – 2006
  107. Aung San Suu Kyi born 1945
  108. Steven Spielberg born 1946
  109. Nikita Khrushchev 1894 – 1971
  110. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900 – 1944
  111. Anne Frank 1929 – 1945
  112. Saddam Hussein 1937 – 2006
  113. Benjamin Netanyahu born 1949
  114. H. G. Wells 1866 – 1946
  115. Helen Keller 1880 – 1968
  116. Tenzin Gyatso born 1935
  117. Pablo Neruda 1904 – 1973
  118. Rafael Orozco Maestre 1954 – 1992
  119. Igor Stravinsky 1882 – 1971
  120. David Hilbert 1862 – 1943
  121. Thomas Mann 1875 – 1955
  122. Bruce Lee 1940 – 1973
  123. Erwin Schrödinger 1887 – 1961
  124. Silvio Berlusconi 1936 – 2023
  125. Bob Marley 1945 – 1981
  126. Shinzō Abe 1954 – 2022
  127. Herbert Hoover 1874 – 1964
  128. Hermann Hesse 1877 – 1962
  129. Isaac Asimov 1919–1920 – 1992
  130. Tim Berners-Lee born 1955
  131. Ingmar Bergman 1918 – 2007
  132. Federico Fellini 1920 – 1993
  133. Mahathir Mohamad born 1925
  134. Calvin Coolidge 1872 – 1933
  135. Boris Yeltsin 1931 – 2007
  136. Ali Khamenei 1939 – 2026
  137. Robin Williams 1951 – 2014
  138. Jackie Chan born 1954
  139. Kim Il-sung 1912 – 1994
  140. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1918 – 2008
  141. Jacques Chirac 1932 – 2019
  142. T. S. Eliot 1888 – 1965
  143. Stanley Kubrick 1928 – 1999
  144. Kahlil Gibran 1883 – 1931
  145. Kwame Nkrumah 1909 – 1972
  146. Marlon Brando 1924 – 2004
  147. Alexander Lukashenka born 1954
  148. Hirohito 1901 – 1989
  149. Richard Feynman 1918 – 1988
  150. Woody Allen born 1935

The 150 best known are listed.