Who Was Alive

Paul Valéry

French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Born 30 October 1871 · died 20 July 1945, aged 73

Who was alive at the same time as Paul Valéry?

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 Paul Valéry was born, Karl Marx was 53, Vladimir Lenin was 1, Mahatma Gandhi was 2, Leo Tolstoy was 43 and Charles Darwin was 62.

When Paul Valéry died, Albert Einstein was 66, Ronald Reagan was 34, Nelson Mandela was 27, Mahatma Gandhi was 75 and Joseph Stalin was 66.

Born during Paul Valéry’s lifetime: Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Ronald Reagan, Nelson Mandela, Joseph Stalin, Joe Biden, Pablo Picasso and Winston Churchill.

Not quite contemporaries: Donald Trump was born about a year after Paul Valéry died, Michael Jackson was born 13 years after Paul Valéry died, Vladimir Putin was born 7 years after Paul Valéry died and Abraham Lincoln died 6 years before Paul Valéry was born.

Compare

All 928 contemporaries we track

  1. Adolf Hitler 1889 – 1945
  2. Albert Einstein 1879 – 1955
  3. Karl Marx 1818 – 1883
  4. Ronald Reagan 1911 – 2004
  5. Vladimir Lenin 1870 – 1924
  6. Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013
  7. Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948
  8. Leo Tolstoy 1828 – 1910
  9. Charles Darwin 1809 – 1882
  10. Joseph Stalin 1878 – 1953
  11. Joe Biden born 1942
  12. Victor Hugo 1802 – 1885
  13. Vincent van Gogh 1853 – 1890
  14. Pablo Picasso 1881 – 1973
  15. Winston Churchill 1874 – 1965
  16. Charlie Chaplin 1889 – 1977
  17. Fyodor Dostoyevsky 1821 – 1881
  18. Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 – 1900
  19. Elizabeth II 1926 – 2022
  20. Thomas Edison 1847 – 1931
  21. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 1879–1881 – 1938
  22. Mark Twain 1835 – 1910
  23. Sigmund Freud 1856 – 1939
  24. John F. Kennedy 1917 – 1963
  25. Marie Curie 1867 – 1934
  26. Martin Luther King Jr. 1929 – 1968
  27. Salvador Dalí 1904 – 1989
  28. Rabindranath Tagore 1861 – 1941
  29. Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1882 – 1945
  30. Hans Christian Andersen 1805 – 1875
  31. Franz Kafka 1883 – 1924
  32. Anton Chekhov 1860 – 1904
  33. Marilyn Monroe 1926 – 1962
  34. Pope Francis 1936 – 2025
  35. Mao Zedong 1893 – 1976
  36. Che Guevara 1928 – 1967
  37. Oscar Wilde 1854 – 1900
  38. Charles de Gaulle 1890 – 1970
  39. Otto von Bismarck 1815 – 1898
  40. Nikola Tesla 1856 – 1943
  41. Neil Armstrong 1930 – 2012
  42. Walt Disney 1901 – 1966
  43. Elvis Presley 1935 – 1977
  44. Louis Pasteur 1822 – 1895
  45. George Orwell 1903 – 1950
  46. Ernest Hemingway 1899 – 1961
  47. Margaret Thatcher 1925 – 2013
  48. James Joyce 1882 – 1941
  49. John Paul II 1920 – 2005
  50. Gabriel García Márquez 1927 – 2014
  51. Richard Wagner 1813 – 1883
  52. Fidel Castro 1926 – 2016
  53. J. R. R. Tolkien 1892 – 1973
  54. Albert Camus 1913 – 1960
  55. Yuri Gagarin 1934 – 1968
  56. Henry Ford 1863 – 1947
  57. Marlene Dietrich 1901 – 1992
  58. Mikhail Gorbachev 1931 – 2022
  59. Benito Mussolini 1883 – 1945
  60. Jean-Paul Sartre 1905 – 1980
  61. Stephen Hawking 1942 – 2018
  62. Friedrich Engels 1820 – 1895
  63. Le Corbusier 1887 – 1965
  64. Frida Kahlo 1907 – 1954
  65. Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997
  66. Jimmy Carter 1924 – 2024
  67. Benedict XVI 1927 – 2022
  68. Harry S. Truman 1884 – 1972
  69. Agatha Christie 1890 – 1976
  70. George H. W. Bush 1924 – 2018
  71. Jorge Luis Borges 1899 – 1986
  72. Sarah Bernhardt 1844 – 1923
  73. Alfred Nobel 1833 – 1896
  74. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 1840 – 1893
  75. Theodore Roosevelt 1858 – 1919
  76. Jawaharlal Nehru 1889 – 1964
  77. Marcel Proust 1871 – 1922
  78. Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890 – 1969
  79. Jules Verne 1828 – 1905
  80. Woodrow Wilson 1856 – 1924
  81. Rosa Luxemburg 1871 – 1919
  82. Roald Amundsen 1872 – c. 1928
  83. Alan Turing 1912 – 1954
  84. Richard Nixon 1913 – 1994
  85. Rudyard Kipling 1865 – 1936
  86. Alfred Hitchcock 1899 – 1980
  87. Noam Chomsky born 1928
  88. Simone de Beauvoir 1908 – 1986
  89. George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950
  90. John Maynard Keynes 1883 – 1946
  91. Niels Bohr 1885 – 1962
  92. Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970
  93. Muammar Gaddafi 1942 – 2011
  94. Leon Trotsky 1879 – 1940
  95. John Lennon 1940 – 1980
  96. Bob Dylan born 1941
  97. Max Planck 1858 – 1947
  98. Arthur Conan Doyle 1859 – 1930
  99. Pelé 1940 – 2022
  100. Muhammad Ali 1942 – 2016
  101. Maxim Gorky 1868 – 1936
  102. Henri Matisse 1869 – 1954
  103. Giuseppe Verdi 1813 – 1901
  104. Dmitri Mendeleev 1834 – 1907
  105. Frank Lloyd Wright 1867 – 1959
  106. Andy Warhol 1928 – 1987
  107. Louis Armstrong 1901 – 1971
  108. Kofi Annan 1938 – 2018
  109. Virginia Woolf 1882 – 1941
  110. Akira Kurosawa 1910 – 1998
  111. Lech Wałęsa born 1943
  112. Victoria 1819 – 1901
  113. Lyndon B. Johnson 1908 – 1973
  114. Gerald Ford 1913 – 2006
  115. Ernest Rutherford 1871 – 1937
  116. Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951
  117. Indira Gandhi 1917 – 1984
  118. Max Weber 1864 – 1920
  119. Huang Xianfan 1899 – 1982
  120. Enrico Fermi 1901 – 1954
  121. Naguib Mahfouz 1911 – 2006
  122. Aung San Suu Kyi born 1945
  123. Henrik Ibsen 1828 – 1906
  124. Nikita Khrushchev 1894 – 1971
  125. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900 – 1944
  126. Anne Frank 1929 – 1945
  127. Saddam Hussein 1937 – 2006
  128. H. G. Wells 1866 – 1946
  129. Helen Keller 1880 – 1968
  130. Tenzin Gyatso born 1935
  131. Pablo Neruda 1904 – 1973
  132. Émile Zola 1840 – 1902
  133. Igor Stravinsky 1882 – 1971
  134. David Hilbert 1862 – 1943
  135. Thomas Mann 1875 – 1955
  136. Bruce Lee 1940 – 1973
  137. Erwin Schrödinger 1887 – 1961
  138. Silvio Berlusconi 1936 – 2023
  139. Bob Marley 1945 – 1981
  140. James Clerk Maxwell 1831 – 1879
  141. Herbert Hoover 1874 – 1964
  142. Hermann Hesse 1877 – 1962
  143. Isaac Asimov 1919–1920 – 1992
  144. Ingmar Bergman 1918 – 2007
  145. Federico Fellini 1920 – 1993
  146. Mahathir Mohamad born 1925
  147. Johannes Brahms 1833 – 1897
  148. Anatole France 1844 – 1924
  149. Alexander Graham Bell 1847 – 1922
  150. Octave Mirbeau 1848 – 1917

The 150 best known are listed.