Who Was Alive
Maximilian Kolbe
Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Maximilian Kolbe

Polish friar

Born 8 January 1894 · died 14 August 1941, aged 47
Also known as Maximilian Maria Kolbe, Maksymilian Maria Kolbe, Raimund Kolbe

Who was alive at the same time as Maximilian Kolbe?

  1. Leo Tolstoy, 1828 – 1910
  2. Mark Twain, 1835 – 1910
  3. Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844 – 1900
  4. Thomas Edison, 1847 – 1931
  5. Sigmund Freud, 1856 – 1939
  6. Rabindranath Tagore, 1861 – 1941
  7. Marie Curie, 1867 – 1934
  8. Mahatma Gandhi, 1869 – 1948
  9. Vladimir Lenin, 1870 – 1924
  10. Winston Churchill, 1874 – 1965
  11. Joseph Stalin, 1878 – 1953
  12. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, c. 1880 – 1938
  13. Albert Einstein, 1879 – 1955
  14. Pablo Picasso, 1881 – 1973
  15. Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1882 – 1945
  16. Charlie Chaplin, 1889 – 1977
  17. Adolf Hitler, 1889 – 1945
  18. Maximilian Kolbe, 1894 – 1941
  19. Salvador Dalí, 1904 – 1989
  20. Ronald Reagan, 1911 – 2004
  21. John F. Kennedy, 1917 – 1963
  22. Nelson Mandela, 1918 – 2013
  23. Elizabeth II, 1926 – 2022
  24. Martin Luther King Jr., 1929 – 1968

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 Maximilian Kolbe was born, Adolf Hitler was 4, Albert Einstein was 14, Vladimir Lenin was 23, Mahatma Gandhi was 24 and Leo Tolstoy was 65.

When Maximilian Kolbe died, Adolf Hitler was 52, Albert Einstein was 62, Ronald Reagan was 30, Nelson Mandela was 23 and Mahatma Gandhi was 71.

Born during Maximilian Kolbe’s lifetime: Ronald Reagan, Nelson Mandela, Elizabeth II, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Salvador Dalí, Marilyn Monroe and Pope Francis.

Not quite contemporaries: Donald Trump was born about 5 years after Maximilian Kolbe died, Vladimir Putin was born about 11 years after Maximilian Kolbe died, Karl Marx died about 11 years before Maximilian Kolbe was born and George W. Bush was born about 5 years after Maximilian Kolbe died.

What happened in Maximilian Kolbe’s lifetime

Where Maximilian Kolbe’s contemporaries were born

Maximilian Kolbe 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 Maximilian Kolbe

The 150 best-known contemporaries

2,351 of the people we track were surely alive at the same time as Maximilian Kolbe. The 150 best known are listed here. See also everyone alive in 1918.

  1. Adolf Hitler 1889 – 1945
  2. Albert Einstein 1879 – 1955
  3. Ronald Reagan 1911 – 2004
  4. Vladimir Lenin 1870 – 1924
  5. Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013
  6. Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948
  7. Leo Tolstoy 1828 – 1910
  8. Joseph Stalin 1878 – 1953
  9. Pablo Picasso 1881 – 1973
  10. Winston Churchill 1874 – 1965
  11. Charlie Chaplin 1889 – 1977
  12. Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 – 1900
  13. Elizabeth II 1926 – 2022
  14. Thomas Edison 1847 – 1931
  15. Sigmund Freud 1856 – 1939
  16. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk c. 1880 – 1938
  17. Mark Twain 1835 – 1910
  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 D. Roosevelt 1882 – 1945
  24. Franz Kafka 1883 – 1924
  25. Anton Chekhov 1860 – 1904
  26. Marilyn Monroe 1926 – 1962
  27. Pope Francis 1936 – 2025
  28. Mao Zedong 1893 – 1976
  29. Che Guevara 1928 – 1967
  30. Oscar Wilde 1854 – 1900
  31. Charles de Gaulle 1890 – 1970
  32. Otto von Bismarck 1815 – 1898
  33. Nikola Tesla 1856 – 1943
  34. Neil Armstrong 1930 – 2012
  35. Walt Disney 1901 – 1966
  36. Elvis Presley 1935 – 1977
  37. Louis Pasteur 1822 – 1895
  38. George Orwell 1903 – 1950
  39. Pope John Paul II 1920 – 2005
  40. Ernest Hemingway 1899 – 1961
  41. Margaret Thatcher 1925 – 2013
  42. James Joyce 1882 – 1941
  43. Gabriel García Márquez 1927 – 2014
  44. Fidel Castro 1926 – 2016
  45. Yuri Gagarin 1934 – 1968
  46. J. R. R. Tolkien 1892 – 1973
  47. Albert Camus 1913 – 1960
  48. Marlene Dietrich 1901 – 1992
  49. Henry Ford 1863 – 1947
  50. Mikhail Gorbachev 1931 – 2022
  51. Benito Mussolini 1883 – 1945
  52. Jean-Paul Sartre 1905 – 1980
  53. Friedrich Engels 1820 – 1895
  54. Le Corbusier 1887 – 1965
  55. Frida Kahlo 1907 – 1954
  56. Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997
  57. Jimmy Carter 1924 – 2024
  58. Pope Benedict XVI 1927 – 2022
  59. Harry S. Truman 1884 – 1972
  60. Agatha Christie 1890 – 1976
  61. George H. W. Bush 1924 – 2018
  62. Sarah Bernhardt 1844 – 1923
  63. Jorge Luis Borges 1899 – 1986
  64. Alfred Nobel 1833 – 1896
  65. Theodore Roosevelt 1858 – 1919
  66. Jawaharlal Nehru 1889 – 1964
  67. Marcel Proust 1871 – 1922
  68. Roald Amundsen 1872 – c. 1928
  69. Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890 – 1969
  70. Jules Verne 1828 – 1905
  71. Woodrow Wilson 1856 – 1924
  72. Rosa Luxemburg 1871 – 1919
  73. Alan Turing 1912 – 1954
  74. Richard Nixon 1913 – 1994
  75. Rudyard Kipling 1865 – 1936
  76. Alfred Hitchcock 1899 – 1980
  77. Noam Chomsky born 1928
  78. John Maynard Keynes 1883 – 1946
  79. Simone de Beauvoir 1908 – 1986
  80. George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950
  81. Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970
  82. Niels Bohr 1885 – 1962
  83. Leon Trotsky 1879 – 1940
  84. John Lennon 1940 – 1980
  85. Bob Dylan born 1941
  86. Max Planck 1858 – 1947
  87. Arthur Conan Doyle 1859 – 1930
  88. Pelé 1940 – 2022
  89. Maxim Gorky 1868 – 1936
  90. Henri Matisse 1869 – 1954
  91. Giuseppe Verdi 1813 – 1901
  92. Dmitri Mendeleev 1834 – 1907
  93. Frank Lloyd Wright 1867 – 1959
  94. Louis Armstrong 1901 – 1971
  95. Andy Warhol 1928 – 1987
  96. Kofi Annan 1938 – 2018
  97. Queen Victoria 1819 – 1901
  98. Virginia Woolf 1882 – 1941
  99. Akira Kurosawa 1910 – 1998
  100. Lyndon B. Johnson 1908 – 1973
  101. Gerald Ford 1913 – 2006
  102. Ernest Rutherford 1871 – 1937
  103. Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951
  104. Indira Gandhi 1917 – 1984
  105. Max Weber 1864 – 1920
  106. Huang Xianfan 1899 – 1982
  107. Henrik Ibsen 1828 – 1906
  108. Enrico Fermi 1901 – 1954
  109. Naguib Mahfouz 1911 – 2006
  110. Saddam Hussein 1937 – 2006
  111. Nikita Khrushchev 1894 – 1971
  112. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900 – 1944
  113. Anne Frank 1929 – 1945
  114. H. G. Wells 1866 – 1946
  115. Helen Keller 1880 – 1968
  116. 14th Dalai Lama born 1935
  117. Pablo Neruda 1904 – 1973
  118. Émile Zola 1840 – 1902
  119. Thomas Mann 1875 – 1955
  120. Igor Stravinsky 1882 – 1971
  121. Bruce Lee 1940 – 1973
  122. David Hilbert 1862 – 1943
  123. Erwin Schrödinger 1887 – 1961
  124. Silvio Berlusconi 1936 – 2023
  125. Herbert Hoover 1874 – 1964
  126. Hermann Hesse 1877 – 1962
  127. Isaac Asimov c. 1920 – 1992
  128. Ingmar Bergman 1918 – 2007
  129. Federico Fellini 1920 – 1993
  130. Mahathir Mohamad born 1925
  131. Johannes Brahms 1833 – 1897
  132. Anatole France 1844 – 1924
  133. Alexander Graham Bell 1847 – 1922
  134. Octave Mirbeau 1848 – 1917
  135. Calvin Coolidge 1872 – 1933
  136. Boris Yeltsin 1931 – 2007
  137. Ali Khamenei 1939 – 2026
  138. Kim Il Sung 1912 – 1994
  139. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1918 – 2008
  140. Jacques Chirac 1932 – 2019
  141. T. S. Eliot 1888 – 1965
  142. Kwame Nkrumah 1909 – 1972
  143. Stanley Kubrick 1928 – 1999
  144. Kahlil Gibran 1883 – 1931
  145. Marlon Brando 1924 – 2004
  146. Lewis Carroll 1832 – 1898
  147. Wilhelm Röntgen 1845 – 1923
  148. Hirohito 1901 – 1989
  149. Richard Feynman 1918 – 1988
  150. Woody Allen born 1935