Who Was Alive
Léon Foucault
Bertall & Cie. Fizped, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Léon Foucault

French physicist

Born 18 September 1819 · died 11 February 1868, aged 48
Also known as John Bernard Foucault

Who was alive at the same time as Léon Foucault?

  1. Thomas Jefferson, 1743 – 1826
  2. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749 – 1832
  3. Ludwig van Beethoven, c. 1770 – 1827
  4. Napoleon, 1769 – 1821
  5. Alexander Pushkin, 1799 – 1837
  6. Victor Hugo, 1802 – 1885
  7. Hans Christian Andersen, 1805 – 1875
  8. Edgar Allan Poe, 1809 – 1849
  9. Abraham Lincoln, 1809 – 1865
  10. Charles Darwin, 1809 – 1882
  11. Charles Dickens, 1812 – 1870
  12. Karl Marx, 1818 – 1883
  13. Léon Foucault, 1819 – 1868
  14. Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1821 – 1881
  15. Leo Tolstoy, 1828 – 1910
  16. Mark Twain, 1835 – 1910
  17. Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844 – 1900
  18. Thomas Edison, 1847 – 1931
  19. Vincent van Gogh, 1853 – 1890
  20. Oscar Wilde, 1854 – 1900
  21. Sigmund Freud, 1856 – 1939
  22. Anton Chekhov, 1860 – 1904
  23. Rabindranath Tagore, 1861 – 1941
  24. Marie Curie, 1867 – 1934

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 Léon Foucault was born, Karl Marx was 1, Abraham Lincoln was 10, Napoleon was 50, Charles Darwin was 10 and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was 70.

When Léon Foucault died, Karl Marx was 49, Leo Tolstoy was 39, Charles Darwin was 58, Victor Hugo was 65 and Vincent van Gogh was 14.

Born during Léon Foucault’s lifetime: Leo Tolstoy, Vincent van Gogh, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Edison, Sigmund Freud, Mark Twain and Marie Curie.

Not quite contemporaries: Albert Einstein was born about 11 years after Léon Foucault died, Vladimir Lenin was born about 2 years after Léon Foucault died, Mahatma Gandhi was born about a year after Léon Foucault died and Joseph Stalin was born about 10 years after Léon Foucault died.

What happened in Léon Foucault’s lifetime

Where Léon Foucault’s contemporaries were born

Léon Foucault 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 Léon Foucault

The 150 best-known contemporaries

805 of the people we track were surely alive at the same time as Léon Foucault. The 150 best known are listed here. See also everyone alive in 1844.

  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. Marie Curie 1867 – 1934
  17. Rabindranath Tagore 1861 – 1941
  18. Alexander Pushkin 1799 – 1837
  19. Hans Christian Andersen 1805 – 1875
  20. Anton Chekhov 1860 – 1904
  21. Thomas Jefferson 1743 – 1826
  22. Edgar Allan Poe 1809 – 1849
  23. Oscar Wilde 1854 – 1900
  24. Lord Byron 1788 – 1824
  25. Otto von Bismarck 1815 – 1898
  26. Nikola Tesla 1856 – 1943
  27. Louis Pasteur 1822 – 1895
  28. Richard Wagner 1813 – 1883
  29. Henry Ford 1863 – 1947
  30. Carl Friedrich Gauss 1777 – 1855
  31. Frédéric Chopin 1810 – 1849
  32. Friedrich Engels 1820 – 1895
  33. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1770 – 1831
  34. Sarah Bernhardt 1844 – 1923
  35. Alfred Nobel 1833 – 1896
  36. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 1840 – 1893
  37. Theodore Roosevelt 1858 – 1919
  38. Jules Verne 1828 – 1905
  39. Woodrow Wilson 1856 – 1924
  40. Rudyard Kipling 1865 – 1936
  41. John Adams 1735 – 1826
  42. Francisco Goya 1746 – 1828
  43. George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950
  44. Max Planck 1858 – 1947
  45. Arthur Conan Doyle 1859 – 1930
  46. Michael Faraday 1791 – 1867
  47. Giuseppe Verdi 1813 – 1901
  48. Charles Baudelaire 1821 – 1867
  49. Dmitri Mendeleev 1834 – 1907
  50. Frank Lloyd Wright 1867 – 1959
  51. Hokusai 1760 – 1849
  52. James Madison 1751 – 1836
  53. Honoré de Balzac 1799 – 1850
  54. Queen Victoria 1819 – 1901
  55. Simón Bolívar 1783 – 1830
  56. Arthur Schopenhauer 1788 – 1860
  57. Franz Schubert 1797 – 1828
  58. Alexandre Dumas 1802 – 1870
  59. Max Weber 1864 – 1920
  60. Henrik Ibsen 1828 – 1906
  61. Søren Kierkegaard 1813 – 1855
  62. H. G. Wells 1866 – 1946
  63. Heinrich Heine 1797 – 1856
  64. John Quincy Adams 1767 – 1848
  65. Émile Zola 1840 – 1902
  66. Andrew Jackson 1767 – 1845
  67. David Hilbert 1862 – 1943
  68. James Clerk Maxwell 1831 – 1879
  69. William Blake 1757 – 1827
  70. Johannes Brahms 1833 – 1897
  71. Anatole France 1844 – 1924
  72. Alexander Graham Bell 1847 – 1922
  73. Octave Mirbeau 1848 – 1917
  74. Gustave Flaubert 1821 – 1880
  75. Ulysses S. Grant 1822 – 1885
  76. James Monroe 1758 – 1831
  77. Nikolai Gogol c. 1809 – c. 1852
  78. Lewis Carroll 1832 – 1898
  79. Wilhelm Röntgen 1845 – 1923
  80. Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 – 1882
  81. Claude Monet 1840 – 1926
  82. Guy de Maupassant 1850 – 1893
  83. Selma Lagerlöf 1858 – 1940
  84. Robert Louis Stevenson 1850 – 1894
  85. W. B. Yeats 1865 – 1939
  86. Ivan Turgenev 1818 – 1883
  87. Florence Nightingale 1820 – 1910
  88. Gustav Mahler 1860 – 1911
  89. Sun Yat-sen 1866 – 1925
  90. John Stuart Mill 1806 – 1873
  91. Antonín Dvořák 1841 – 1904
  92. Walt Whitman 1819 – 1892
  93. James A. Garfield 1831 – 1881
  94. Emily Dickinson 1830 – 1886
  95. William Howard Taft 1857 – 1930
  96. Giacomo Puccini 1858 – 1924
  97. Martin Van Buren 1782 – 1862
  98. Grover Cleveland 1837 – 1908
  99. John Keats 1795 – 1821
  100. Andrew Johnson 1808 – 1875
  101. Henry David Thoreau 1817 – 1862
  102. Zachary Taylor 1784 – 1850
  103. James Buchanan 1791 – 1868
  104. James K. Polk 1795 – 1849
  105. Arthur Rimbaud 1854 – 1891
  106. John Tyler 1790 – 1862
  107. Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 – 1822
  108. Mikhail Bakunin 1814 – 1876
  109. William McKinley 1843 – 1901
  110. Alexander von Humboldt 1769 – 1859
  111. William Wordsworth 1770 – 1850
  112. Millard Fillmore 1800 – 1874
  113. L. L. Zamenhof 1859 – 1917
  114. Warren G. Harding 1865 – 1923
  115. William Henry Harrison 1773 – 1841
  116. Romain Rolland 1866 – 1944
  117. Walter Scott 1771 – 1832
  118. Franklin Pierce 1804 – 1869
  119. Rutherford B. Hayes 1822 – 1893
  120. Paul Cézanne 1839 – 1906
  121. Henryk Sienkiewicz 1846 – 1916
  122. Benjamin Disraeli 1804 – 1881
  123. Taras Shevchenko 1814 – 1861
  124. George Eliot 1819 – 1880
  125. Henri Bergson 1859 – 1941
  126. Swami Vivekananda 1863 – 1902
  127. George Sand 1804 – 1876
  128. Stendhal 1783 – 1842
  129. James Prescott Joule 1818 – 1889
  130. Benjamin Harrison 1833 – 1901
  131. Hector Berlioz 1803 – 1869
  132. Charlotte Brontë 1816 – 1855
  133. Knut Hamsun 1859 – 1952
  134. Gregor Mendel 1822 – 1884
  135. Luigi Pirandello 1867 – 1936
  136. Joseph Fourier 1768 – 1830
  137. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres 1780 – 1867
  138. Mary Shelley 1797 – 1851
  139. Auguste Comte 1798 – 1857
  140. Ada Lovelace 1815 – 1852
  141. Paul Gauguin 1848 – 1903
  142. Giuseppe Garibaldi 1807 – 1882
  143. Chester A. Arthur 1829 – 1886
  144. Maurice Maeterlinck 1862 – 1949
  145. Robert Schumann 1810 – 1856
  146. Emily Brontë 1818 – 1848
  147. Herman Melville 1819 – 1891
  148. Auguste Rodin 1840 – 1917
  149. Antoni Gaudí 1852 – 1926
  150. Henri Poincaré 1854 – 1912