Who Was Alive

Martin Luther King Jr.

American Baptist minister and civil rights leader

Born 15 January 1929 · died 4 April 1968, aged 39

Who was alive at the same time as Martin Luther King Jr.?

  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. 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 Martin Luther King Jr. was born, Adolf Hitler was 39, Albert Einstein was 49, Ronald Reagan was 17, Nelson Mandela was 10 and Mahatma Gandhi was 59.

When Martin Luther King Jr. died, Barack Obama was 6, Donald Trump was 21, Michael Jackson was 9, Vladimir Putin was 15 and Ronald Reagan was 57.

Born during Martin Luther King Jr.’s lifetime: Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Michael Jackson, Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush, Joe Biden, Bill Gates and Jimmy Wales.

Not quite contemporaries: Vladimir Lenin died 5 years before Martin Luther King Jr. was born, Franz Kafka died 5 years before Martin Luther King Jr. was born, Shakira was born 9 years after Martin Luther King Jr. died and Volodymyr Zelenskyy was born 10 years after Martin Luther King Jr. died.

Compare

All 1,016 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. Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013
  9. Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948
  10. George W. Bush born 1946
  11. Joseph Stalin 1878 – 1953
  12. Joe Biden born 1942
  13. Pablo Picasso 1881 – 1973
  14. Winston Churchill 1874 – 1965
  15. Charlie Chaplin 1889 – 1977
  16. Elizabeth II 1926 – 2022
  17. Thomas Edison 1847 – 1931
  18. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 1879–1881 – 1938
  19. Sigmund Freud 1856 – 1939
  20. John F. Kennedy 1917 – 1963
  21. Marie Curie 1867 – 1934
  22. Salvador Dalí 1904 – 1989
  23. Rabindranath Tagore 1861 – 1941
  24. Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1882 – 1945
  25. Bill Gates born 1955
  26. Marilyn Monroe 1926 – 1962
  27. Jimmy Wales born 1966
  28. Pope Francis 1936 – 2025
  29. Mao Zedong 1893 – 1976
  30. Steve Jobs 1955 – 2011
  31. Che Guevara 1928 – 1967
  32. Bill Clinton born 1946
  33. Charles de Gaulle 1890 – 1970
  34. Angela Merkel born 1954
  35. Nikola Tesla 1856 – 1943
  36. Neil Armstrong 1930 – 2012
  37. François Hollande born 1954
  38. Walt Disney 1901 – 1966
  39. Elvis Presley 1935 – 1977
  40. George Orwell 1903 – 1950
  41. Ernest Hemingway 1899 – 1961
  42. Margaret Thatcher 1925 – 2013
  43. James Joyce 1882 – 1941
  44. John Paul II 1920 – 2005
  45. Gabriel García Márquez 1927 – 2014
  46. Fidel Castro 1926 – 2016
  47. J. R. R. Tolkien 1892 – 1973
  48. Albert Camus 1913 – 1960
  49. Yuri Gagarin 1934 – 1968
  50. Henry Ford 1863 – 1947
  51. Marlene Dietrich 1901 – 1992
  52. Mikhail Gorbachev 1931 – 2022
  53. Benito Mussolini 1883 – 1945
  54. Jean-Paul Sartre 1905 – 1980
  55. Stephen Hawking 1942 – 2018
  56. Le Corbusier 1887 – 1965
  57. Frida Kahlo 1907 – 1954
  58. Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997
  59. Jimmy Carter 1924 – 2024
  60. Benedict XVI 1927 – 2022
  61. Harry S. Truman 1884 – 1972
  62. Agatha Christie 1890 – 1976
  63. Hillary Clinton born 1947
  64. George H. W. Bush 1924 – 2018
  65. Jorge Luis Borges 1899 – 1986
  66. Nicolas Sarkozy born 1955
  67. Madonna born 1958
  68. Kamala Harris born 1964
  69. Jawaharlal Nehru 1889 – 1964
  70. Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890 – 1969
  71. Alan Turing 1912 – 1954
  72. Richard Nixon 1913 – 1994
  73. Xi Jinping born 1953
  74. Rudyard Kipling 1865 – 1936
  75. Naruhito born 1960
  76. Alfred Hitchcock 1899 – 1980
  77. Noam Chomsky born 1928
  78. Simone de Beauvoir 1908 – 1986
  79. Hugo Chávez 1954 – 2013
  80. George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950
  81. John Maynard Keynes 1883 – 1946
  82. Niels Bohr 1885 – 1962
  83. Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970
  84. Muammar Gaddafi 1942 – 2011
  85. Sung Jae-gi 1967 – 2013
  86. Leon Trotsky 1879 – 1940
  87. John Lennon 1940 – 1980
  88. Bob Dylan born 1941
  89. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan born 1954
  90. Max Planck 1858 – 1947
  91. Arthur Conan Doyle 1859 – 1930
  92. Pelé 1940 – 2022
  93. Muhammad Ali 1942 – 2016
  94. Maxim Gorky 1868 – 1936
  95. Henri Matisse 1869 – 1954
  96. J. K. Rowling born 1965
  97. Frank Lloyd Wright 1867 – 1959
  98. Andy Warhol 1928 – 1987
  99. Louis Armstrong 1901 – 1971
  100. Kofi Annan 1938 – 2018
  101. Osama bin Laden 1957 – 2011
  102. Virginia Woolf 1882 – 1941
  103. Akira Kurosawa 1910 – 1998
  104. Lech Wałęsa born 1943
  105. Freddie Mercury 1946 – 1991
  106. Charles III born 1948
  107. Lyndon B. Johnson 1908 – 1973
  108. Gerald Ford 1913 – 2006
  109. Diego Maradona 1960 – 2020
  110. Ernest Rutherford 1871 – 1937
  111. Leo XIV born 1955
  112. Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951
  113. Indira Gandhi 1917 – 1984
  114. Narendra Modi born 1950
  115. Rafael Correa born 1963
  116. Huang Xianfan 1899 – 1982
  117. Enrico Fermi 1901 – 1954
  118. Naguib Mahfouz 1911 – 2006
  119. Aung San Suu Kyi born 1945
  120. Steven Spielberg born 1946
  121. Nikita Khrushchev 1894 – 1971
  122. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900 – 1944
  123. Anne Frank 1929 – 1945
  124. Saddam Hussein 1937 – 2006
  125. Benjamin Netanyahu born 1949
  126. H. G. Wells 1866 – 1946
  127. Helen Keller 1880 – 1968
  128. Tenzin Gyatso born 1935
  129. Dmitry Medvedev born 1965
  130. Pablo Neruda 1904 – 1973
  131. Rafael Orozco Maestre 1954 – 1992
  132. Igor Stravinsky 1882 – 1971
  133. David Hilbert 1862 – 1943
  134. Thomas Mann 1875 – 1955
  135. Bruce Lee 1940 – 1973
  136. Erwin Schrödinger 1887 – 1961
  137. Silvio Berlusconi 1936 – 2023
  138. Bob Marley 1945 – 1981
  139. Shinzō Abe 1954 – 2022
  140. Herbert Hoover 1874 – 1964
  141. Hermann Hesse 1877 – 1962
  142. Isaac Asimov 1919–1920 – 1992
  143. Tim Berners-Lee born 1955
  144. Ingmar Bergman 1918 – 2007
  145. Federico Fellini 1920 – 1993
  146. Mahathir Mohamad born 1925
  147. Calvin Coolidge 1872 – 1933
  148. Boris Yeltsin 1931 – 2007
  149. Ali Khamenei 1939 – 2026
  150. Robin Williams 1951 – 2014

The 150 best known are listed.