Who Was Alive
John Brown
Augustus Washington, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

John Brown

American abolitionist

Born 9 May 1800 · died 2 December 1859, aged 59
Also known as Isaac Smith, Old Brown, Fighting Brown

Who was alive at the same time as John Brown?

  1. Immanuel Kant, 1724 – 1804
  2. Thomas Jefferson, 1743 – 1826
  3. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749 – 1832
  4. Ludwig van Beethoven, c. 1770 – 1827
  5. Napoleon, 1769 – 1821
  6. Lord Byron, 1788 – 1824
  7. Alexander Pushkin, 1799 – 1837
  8. John Brown, 1800 – 1859
  9. Victor Hugo, 1802 – 1885
  10. Hans Christian Andersen, 1805 – 1875
  11. Edgar Allan Poe, 1809 – 1849
  12. Abraham Lincoln, 1809 – 1865
  13. Charles Darwin, 1809 – 1882
  14. Charles Dickens, 1812 – 1870
  15. Otto von Bismarck, 1815 – 1898
  16. Karl Marx, 1818 – 1883
  17. Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1821 – 1881
  18. Leo Tolstoy, 1828 – 1910
  19. Mark Twain, 1835 – 1910
  20. Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844 – 1900
  21. Thomas Edison, 1847 – 1931
  22. Vincent van Gogh, 1853 – 1890
  23. Oscar Wilde, 1854 – 1900
  24. Sigmund Freud, 1856 – 1939

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 John Brown was born, Napoleon was 30, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was 50, Immanuel Kant was 76, Alexander Pushkin was under a year old and Thomas Jefferson was 57.

When John Brown died, Karl Marx was 41, Abraham Lincoln was 50, Leo Tolstoy was 31, Charles Darwin was 50 and Victor Hugo was 57.

Born during John Brown’s lifetime: Karl Marx, Abraham Lincoln, Leo Tolstoy, Charles Darwin, Victor Hugo, Vincent van Gogh, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Not quite contemporaries: Vladimir Lenin was born about 11 years after John Brown died, Mahatma Gandhi was born about 10 years after John Brown died, George Washington died about a year before John Brown was born and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died about 9 years before John Brown was born.

What happened in John Brown’s lifetime

Where John Brown’s contemporaries were born

John Brown 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 John Brown

The 150 best-known contemporaries

739 of the people we track were surely alive at the same time as John Brown. The 150 best known are listed here. See also everyone alive in 1830.

  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. Immanuel Kant 1724 – 1804
  13. Thomas Edison 1847 – 1931
  14. Sigmund Freud 1856 – 1939
  15. Mark Twain 1835 – 1910
  16. Charles Dickens 1812 – 1870
  17. Alexander Pushkin 1799 – 1837
  18. Hans Christian Andersen 1805 – 1875
  19. Thomas Jefferson 1743 – 1826
  20. Edgar Allan Poe 1809 – 1849
  21. Oscar Wilde 1854 – 1900
  22. Lord Byron 1788 – 1824
  23. Otto von Bismarck 1815 – 1898
  24. Nikola Tesla 1856 – 1943
  25. Louis Pasteur 1822 – 1895
  26. Richard Wagner 1813 – 1883
  27. Jane Austen 1775 – 1817
  28. Carl Friedrich Gauss 1777 – 1855
  29. Frédéric Chopin 1810 – 1849
  30. Friedrich Engels 1820 – 1895
  31. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1770 – 1831
  32. Sarah Bernhardt 1844 – 1923
  33. Alfred Nobel 1833 – 1896
  34. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 1840 – 1893
  35. Theodore Roosevelt 1858 – 1919
  36. Jules Verne 1828 – 1905
  37. Woodrow Wilson 1856 – 1924
  38. John Adams 1735 – 1826
  39. Francisco Goya 1746 – 1828
  40. George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950
  41. Friedrich Schiller 1759 – 1805
  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. Henrik Ibsen 1828 – 1906
  57. Søren Kierkegaard 1813 – 1855
  58. Heinrich Heine 1797 – 1856
  59. John Quincy Adams 1767 – 1848
  60. Émile Zola 1840 – 1902
  61. Andrew Jackson 1767 – 1845
  62. James Clerk Maxwell 1831 – 1879
  63. William Blake 1757 – 1827
  64. Johannes Brahms 1833 – 1897
  65. Anatole France 1844 – 1924
  66. Alexander Graham Bell 1847 – 1922
  67. Octave Mirbeau 1848 – 1917
  68. James Watt 1736 – 1819
  69. Gustave Flaubert 1821 – 1880
  70. Ulysses S. Grant 1822 – 1885
  71. Joseph Haydn 1732 – 1809
  72. James Monroe 1758 – 1831
  73. Nikolai Gogol c. 1809 – c. 1852
  74. Lewis Carroll 1832 – 1898
  75. Wilhelm Röntgen 1845 – 1923
  76. Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 – 1882
  77. Claude Monet 1840 – 1926
  78. Guy de Maupassant 1850 – 1893
  79. Selma Lagerlöf 1858 – 1940
  80. Robert Louis Stevenson 1850 – 1894
  81. Ivan Turgenev 1818 – 1883
  82. Florence Nightingale 1820 – 1910
  83. John Stuart Mill 1806 – 1873
  84. Antonín Dvořák 1841 – 1904
  85. Walt Whitman 1819 – 1892
  86. James A. Garfield 1831 – 1881
  87. Emily Dickinson 1830 – 1886
  88. William Howard Taft 1857 – 1930
  89. Giacomo Puccini 1858 – 1924
  90. Martin Van Buren 1782 – 1862
  91. Grover Cleveland 1837 – 1908
  92. John Keats 1795 – 1821
  93. Andrew Johnson 1808 – 1875
  94. Henry David Thoreau 1817 – 1862
  95. Zachary Taylor 1784 – 1850
  96. James Buchanan 1791 – 1868
  97. James K. Polk 1795 – 1849
  98. Arthur Rimbaud 1854 – 1891
  99. John Tyler 1790 – 1862
  100. Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 – 1822
  101. Mikhail Bakunin 1814 – 1876
  102. William McKinley 1843 – 1901
  103. Alexander von Humboldt 1769 – 1859
  104. William Wordsworth 1770 – 1850
  105. Millard Fillmore 1800 – 1874
  106. William Henry Harrison 1773 – 1841
  107. Walter Scott 1771 – 1832
  108. Franklin Pierce 1804 – 1869
  109. Rutherford B. Hayes 1822 – 1893
  110. Paul Cézanne 1839 – 1906
  111. Henryk Sienkiewicz 1846 – 1916
  112. Benjamin Disraeli 1804 – 1881
  113. Taras Shevchenko 1814 – 1861
  114. George Eliot 1819 – 1880
  115. Henri Bergson 1859 – 1941
  116. George Sand 1804 – 1876
  117. Stendhal 1783 – 1842
  118. James Prescott Joule 1818 – 1889
  119. Benjamin Harrison 1833 – 1901
  120. Thomas Paine 1737 – 1809
  121. Hector Berlioz 1803 – 1869
  122. Charlotte Brontë 1816 – 1855
  123. Knut Hamsun 1859 – 1952
  124. Gregor Mendel 1822 – 1884
  125. Joseph Fourier 1768 – 1830
  126. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres 1780 – 1867
  127. Mary Shelley 1797 – 1851
  128. Auguste Comte 1798 – 1857
  129. Ada Lovelace 1815 – 1852
  130. Paul Gauguin 1848 – 1903
  131. Giuseppe Garibaldi 1807 – 1882
  132. Chester A. Arthur 1829 – 1886
  133. Robert Schumann 1810 – 1856
  134. Emily Brontë 1818 – 1848
  135. Herman Melville 1819 – 1891
  136. Auguste Rodin 1840 – 1917
  137. Antoni Gaudí 1852 – 1926
  138. Henri Poincaré 1854 – 1912
  139. Pierre Curie 1859 – 1906
  140. Wilhelm II 1859 – 1941
  141. Adam Mickiewicz 1798 – 1855
  142. Joseph Conrad 1857 – 1924
  143. Napoleon III 1808 – 1873
  144. Mikhail Lermontov 1814 – 1841
  145. Pierre-Simon Laplace 1749 – 1827
  146. Franz Liszt 1811 – 1886
  147. Theodor Mommsen 1817 – 1903
  148. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson 1832 – 1910
  149. Robert Koch 1843 – 1910
  150. Émile Durkheim 1858 – 1917