Who Was Alive

John F. Kennedy

President of the United States from 1961 to 1963

Born 29 May 1917 · died 22 November 1963, aged 46

Who was alive at the same time as John F. Kennedy?

  1. Thomas Edison
  2. Sigmund Freud
  3. Marie Curie
  4. Mahatma Gandhi
  5. Vladimir Lenin
  6. Winston Churchill
  7. Joseph Stalin
  8. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
  9. Albert Einstein
  10. Pablo Picasso
  11. Charlie Chaplin
  12. Adolf Hitler
  13. Salvador Dalí
  14. Ronald Reagan
  15. John F. Kennedy
  16. Nelson Mandela
  17. Elizabeth II
  18. Martin Luther King Jr.
  19. Joe Biden
  20. Donald Trump
  21. George W. Bush
  22. Vladimir Putin
  23. Michael Jackson
  24. Barack Obama
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 John F. Kennedy was born, Adolf Hitler was 28, Albert Einstein was 38, Ronald Reagan was 6, Vladimir Lenin was 47 and Mahatma Gandhi was 47.

When John F. Kennedy died, Barack Obama was 2, Donald Trump was 17, Michael Jackson was 5, Vladimir Putin was 11 and Ronald Reagan was 52.

Born during John F. Kennedy’s lifetime: Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Michael Jackson, Vladimir Putin, Nelson Mandela, George W. Bush, Joe Biden and Elizabeth II.

Not quite contemporaries: Leo Tolstoy died 7 years before John F. Kennedy was born, Mark Twain died 7 years before John F. Kennedy was born, Anton Chekhov died 13 years before John F. Kennedy was born and Jimmy Wales was born 3 years after John F. Kennedy died.

Compare

All 1,024 contemporaries we track

  1. Barack Obama born 1961
  2. Donald Trump born 1946
  3. Adolf Hitler 1889 – 1945
  4. Michael Jackson 1958 – 2009
  5. Albert Einstein 1879 – 1955
  6. Vladimir Putin born 1952
  7. Ronald Reagan 1911 – 2004
  8. Vladimir Lenin 1870 – 1924
  9. Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013
  10. Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948
  11. George W. Bush born 1946
  12. Joseph Stalin 1878 – 1953
  13. Joe Biden born 1942
  14. Pablo Picasso 1881 – 1973
  15. Winston Churchill 1874 – 1965
  16. Charlie Chaplin 1889 – 1977
  17. Elizabeth II 1926 – 2022
  18. Thomas Edison 1847 – 1931
  19. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 1879–1881 – 1938
  20. Sigmund Freud 1856 – 1939
  21. Marie Curie 1867 – 1934
  22. Martin Luther King Jr. 1929 – 1968
  23. Salvador Dalí 1904 – 1989
  24. Rabindranath Tagore 1861 – 1941
  25. Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1882 – 1945
  26. Bill Gates born 1955
  27. Franz Kafka 1883 – 1924
  28. Marilyn Monroe 1926 – 1962
  29. Pope Francis 1936 – 2025
  30. Mao Zedong 1893 – 1976
  31. Steve Jobs 1955 – 2011
  32. Che Guevara 1928 – 1967
  33. Bill Clinton born 1946
  34. Charles de Gaulle 1890 – 1970
  35. Angela Merkel born 1954
  36. Nikola Tesla 1856 – 1943
  37. Neil Armstrong 1930 – 2012
  38. François Hollande born 1954
  39. Walt Disney 1901 – 1966
  40. Elvis Presley 1935 – 1977
  41. George Orwell 1903 – 1950
  42. Ernest Hemingway 1899 – 1961
  43. Margaret Thatcher 1925 – 2013
  44. James Joyce 1882 – 1941
  45. John Paul II 1920 – 2005
  46. Gabriel García Márquez 1927 – 2014
  47. Fidel Castro 1926 – 2016
  48. J. R. R. Tolkien 1892 – 1973
  49. Albert Camus 1913 – 1960
  50. Yuri Gagarin 1934 – 1968
  51. Henry Ford 1863 – 1947
  52. Marlene Dietrich 1901 – 1992
  53. Mikhail Gorbachev 1931 – 2022
  54. Benito Mussolini 1883 – 1945
  55. Jean-Paul Sartre 1905 – 1980
  56. Stephen Hawking 1942 – 2018
  57. Le Corbusier 1887 – 1965
  58. Frida Kahlo 1907 – 1954
  59. Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997
  60. Jimmy Carter 1924 – 2024
  61. Benedict XVI 1927 – 2022
  62. Harry S. Truman 1884 – 1972
  63. Agatha Christie 1890 – 1976
  64. Hillary Clinton born 1947
  65. George H. W. Bush 1924 – 2018
  66. Jorge Luis Borges 1899 – 1986
  67. Sarah Bernhardt 1844 – 1923
  68. Nicolas Sarkozy born 1955
  69. Madonna born 1958
  70. Theodore Roosevelt 1858 – 1919
  71. Jawaharlal Nehru 1889 – 1964
  72. Marcel Proust 1871 – 1922
  73. Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890 – 1969
  74. Woodrow Wilson 1856 – 1924
  75. Rosa Luxemburg 1871 – 1919
  76. Roald Amundsen 1872 – c. 1928
  77. Alan Turing 1912 – 1954
  78. Richard Nixon 1913 – 1994
  79. Xi Jinping born 1953
  80. Rudyard Kipling 1865 – 1936
  81. Naruhito born 1960
  82. Alfred Hitchcock 1899 – 1980
  83. Noam Chomsky born 1928
  84. Simone de Beauvoir 1908 – 1986
  85. Hugo Chávez 1954 – 2013
  86. George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950
  87. John Maynard Keynes 1883 – 1946
  88. Niels Bohr 1885 – 1962
  89. Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970
  90. Muammar Gaddafi 1942 – 2011
  91. Leon Trotsky 1879 – 1940
  92. John Lennon 1940 – 1980
  93. Bob Dylan born 1941
  94. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan born 1954
  95. Max Planck 1858 – 1947
  96. Arthur Conan Doyle 1859 – 1930
  97. Pelé 1940 – 2022
  98. Muhammad Ali 1942 – 2016
  99. Maxim Gorky 1868 – 1936
  100. Henri Matisse 1869 – 1954
  101. Frank Lloyd Wright 1867 – 1959
  102. Andy Warhol 1928 – 1987
  103. Louis Armstrong 1901 – 1971
  104. Kofi Annan 1938 – 2018
  105. Osama bin Laden 1957 – 2011
  106. Virginia Woolf 1882 – 1941
  107. Akira Kurosawa 1910 – 1998
  108. Lech Wałęsa born 1943
  109. Freddie Mercury 1946 – 1991
  110. Charles III born 1948
  111. Lyndon B. Johnson 1908 – 1973
  112. Gerald Ford 1913 – 2006
  113. Diego Maradona 1960 – 2020
  114. Ernest Rutherford 1871 – 1937
  115. Leo XIV born 1955
  116. Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951
  117. Indira Gandhi 1917 – 1984
  118. Narendra Modi born 1950
  119. Rafael Correa born 1963
  120. Max Weber 1864 – 1920
  121. Huang Xianfan 1899 – 1982
  122. Enrico Fermi 1901 – 1954
  123. Naguib Mahfouz 1911 – 2006
  124. Aung San Suu Kyi born 1945
  125. Steven Spielberg born 1946
  126. Nikita Khrushchev 1894 – 1971
  127. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900 – 1944
  128. Anne Frank 1929 – 1945
  129. Saddam Hussein 1937 – 2006
  130. Benjamin Netanyahu born 1949
  131. H. G. Wells 1866 – 1946
  132. Helen Keller 1880 – 1968
  133. Tenzin Gyatso born 1935
  134. Pablo Neruda 1904 – 1973
  135. Rafael Orozco Maestre 1954 – 1992
  136. Igor Stravinsky 1882 – 1971
  137. David Hilbert 1862 – 1943
  138. Thomas Mann 1875 – 1955
  139. Bruce Lee 1940 – 1973
  140. Erwin Schrödinger 1887 – 1961
  141. Silvio Berlusconi 1936 – 2023
  142. Bob Marley 1945 – 1981
  143. Shinzō Abe 1954 – 2022
  144. Herbert Hoover 1874 – 1964
  145. Hermann Hesse 1877 – 1962
  146. Isaac Asimov 1919–1920 – 1992
  147. Tim Berners-Lee born 1955
  148. Ingmar Bergman 1918 – 2007
  149. Federico Fellini 1920 – 1993
  150. Mahathir Mohamad born 1925

The 150 best known are listed.