Who Was Alive
Scott Joplin
Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Scott Joplin

American composer and musician

Born 1867–1868 · died 1 April 1917
Also known as The king of Ragtime

Who was alive at the same time as Scott Joplin?

  1. Victor Hugo, 1802 – 1885
  2. Charles Darwin, 1809 – 1882
  3. Charles Dickens, 1812 – 1870
  4. Karl Marx, 1818 – 1883
  5. Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1821 – 1881
  6. Leo Tolstoy, 1828 – 1910
  7. Mark Twain, 1835 – 1910
  8. Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844 – 1900
  9. Thomas Edison, 1847 – 1931
  10. Vincent van Gogh, 1853 – 1890
  11. Sigmund Freud, 1856 – 1939
  12. Scott Joplin, c. 1868 – 1917
  13. Marie Curie, 1867 – 1934
  14. Mahatma Gandhi, 1869 – 1948
  15. Vladimir Lenin, 1870 – 1924
  16. Winston Churchill, 1874 – 1965
  17. Joseph Stalin, 1878 – 1953
  18. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, c. 1880 – 1938
  19. Albert Einstein, 1879 – 1955
  20. Pablo Picasso, 1881 – 1973
  21. Charlie Chaplin, 1889 – 1977
  22. Adolf Hitler, 1889 – 1945
  23. Salvador Dalí, 1904 – 1989
  24. Ronald Reagan, 1911 – 2004

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 Scott Joplin was born, Mark Twain was 31 or 32, Louis Pasteur was 44 or 45, Friedrich Engels was 46 or 47, Woodrow Wilson was 10 or 11 and Rudyard Kipling was 1 or 2.

When Scott Joplin died, Adolf Hitler was 27, Albert Einstein was 38, Ronald Reagan was 6, Vladimir Lenin was 46 and Mahatma Gandhi was 47.

Born during Scott Joplin’s lifetime: Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Ronald Reagan, Vladimir Lenin, Mahatma Gandhi, Joseph Stalin, Pablo Picasso and Winston Churchill.

Not quite contemporaries: Abraham Lincoln died about 2 years before Scott Joplin was born, Nelson Mandela was born about a year after Scott Joplin died, Elizabeth II was born about 9 years after Scott Joplin died and John F. Kennedy was born months after Scott Joplin died.

What happened in Scott Joplin’s lifetime

Where Scott Joplin’s contemporaries were born

Scott Joplin 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 Scott Joplin

The 150 best-known contemporaries

1,620 of the people we track were surely alive at the same time as Scott Joplin. The 150 best known are listed here. See also everyone alive in 1893.

  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. Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948
  7. Leo Tolstoy 1828 – 1910
  8. Charles Darwin 1809 – 1882
  9. Joseph Stalin 1878 – 1953
  10. Victor Hugo 1802 – 1885
  11. Vincent van Gogh 1853 – 1890
  12. Pablo Picasso 1881 – 1973
  13. Winston Churchill 1874 – 1965
  14. Charlie Chaplin 1889 – 1977
  15. Fyodor Dostoevsky 1821 – 1881
  16. Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 – 1900
  17. Thomas Edison 1847 – 1931
  18. Sigmund Freud 1856 – 1939
  19. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk c. 1880 – 1938
  20. Mark Twain 1835 – 1910
  21. Charles Dickens 1812 – 1870
  22. Marie Curie 1867 – 1934
  23. Salvador Dalí 1904 – 1989
  24. Rabindranath Tagore 1861 – 1941
  25. Franklin D. Roosevelt 1882 – 1945
  26. Hans Christian Andersen 1805 – 1875
  27. Franz Kafka 1883 – 1924
  28. Anton Chekhov 1860 – 1904
  29. Mao Zedong 1893 – 1976
  30. Oscar Wilde 1854 – 1900
  31. Charles de Gaulle 1890 – 1970
  32. Otto von Bismarck 1815 – 1898
  33. Nikola Tesla 1856 – 1943
  34. Walt Disney 1901 – 1966
  35. Louis Pasteur 1822 – 1895
  36. George Orwell 1903 – 1950
  37. Ernest Hemingway 1899 – 1961
  38. James Joyce 1882 – 1941
  39. Richard Wagner 1813 – 1883
  40. J. R. R. Tolkien 1892 – 1973
  41. Albert Camus 1913 – 1960
  42. Marlene Dietrich 1901 – 1992
  43. Henry Ford 1863 – 1947
  44. Benito Mussolini 1883 – 1945
  45. Jean-Paul Sartre 1905 – 1980
  46. Friedrich Engels 1820 – 1895
  47. Le Corbusier 1887 – 1965
  48. Frida Kahlo 1907 – 1954
  49. Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997
  50. Harry S. Truman 1884 – 1972
  51. Agatha Christie 1890 – 1976
  52. Sarah Bernhardt 1844 – 1923
  53. Jorge Luis Borges 1899 – 1986
  54. Alfred Nobel 1833 – 1896
  55. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 1840 – 1893
  56. Theodore Roosevelt 1858 – 1919
  57. Jawaharlal Nehru 1889 – 1964
  58. Marcel Proust 1871 – 1922
  59. Roald Amundsen 1872 – c. 1928
  60. Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890 – 1969
  61. Jules Verne 1828 – 1905
  62. Woodrow Wilson 1856 – 1924
  63. Rosa Luxemburg 1871 – 1919
  64. Alan Turing 1912 – 1954
  65. Richard Nixon 1913 – 1994
  66. Rudyard Kipling 1865 – 1936
  67. Alfred Hitchcock 1899 – 1980
  68. John Maynard Keynes 1883 – 1946
  69. Simone de Beauvoir 1908 – 1986
  70. George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950
  71. Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970
  72. Niels Bohr 1885 – 1962
  73. Leon Trotsky 1879 – 1940
  74. Max Planck 1858 – 1947
  75. Arthur Conan Doyle 1859 – 1930
  76. Maxim Gorky 1868 – 1936
  77. Henri Matisse 1869 – 1954
  78. Giuseppe Verdi 1813 – 1901
  79. Dmitri Mendeleev 1834 – 1907
  80. Frank Lloyd Wright 1867 – 1959
  81. Louis Armstrong 1901 – 1971
  82. Queen Victoria 1819 – 1901
  83. Virginia Woolf 1882 – 1941
  84. Akira Kurosawa 1910 – 1998
  85. Lyndon B. Johnson 1908 – 1973
  86. Gerald Ford 1913 – 2006
  87. Alexandre Dumas 1802 – 1870
  88. Ernest Rutherford 1871 – 1937
  89. Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951
  90. Max Weber 1864 – 1920
  91. Huang Xianfan 1899 – 1982
  92. Henrik Ibsen 1828 – 1906
  93. Enrico Fermi 1901 – 1954
  94. Naguib Mahfouz 1911 – 2006
  95. Nikita Khrushchev 1894 – 1971
  96. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900 – 1944
  97. H. G. Wells 1866 – 1946
  98. Helen Keller 1880 – 1968
  99. Pablo Neruda 1904 – 1973
  100. Émile Zola 1840 – 1902
  101. Thomas Mann 1875 – 1955
  102. Igor Stravinsky 1882 – 1971
  103. David Hilbert 1862 – 1943
  104. Erwin Schrödinger 1887 – 1961
  105. James Clerk Maxwell 1831 – 1879
  106. Herbert Hoover 1874 – 1964
  107. Hermann Hesse 1877 – 1962
  108. Johannes Brahms 1833 – 1897
  109. Anatole France 1844 – 1924
  110. Alexander Graham Bell 1847 – 1922
  111. Octave Mirbeau 1848 – 1917
  112. Calvin Coolidge 1872 – 1933
  113. Gustave Flaubert 1821 – 1880
  114. Ulysses S. Grant 1822 – 1885
  115. Kim Il Sung 1912 – 1994
  116. T. S. Eliot 1888 – 1965
  117. Kwame Nkrumah 1909 – 1972
  118. Kahlil Gibran 1883 – 1931
  119. Lewis Carroll 1832 – 1898
  120. Wilhelm Röntgen 1845 – 1923
  121. Hirohito 1901 – 1989
  122. Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 – 1882
  123. Claude Monet 1840 – 1926
  124. Guy de Maupassant 1850 – 1893
  125. Selma Lagerlöf 1858 – 1940
  126. Bertolt Brecht 1898 – 1956
  127. Robert Louis Stevenson 1850 – 1894
  128. W. B. Yeats 1865 – 1939
  129. Ivan Turgenev 1818 – 1883
  130. Carl Jung 1875 – 1961
  131. Ho Chi Minh 1890 – 1969
  132. Florence Nightingale 1820 – 1910
  133. Gustav Mahler 1860 – 1911
  134. Sun Yat-sen 1866 – 1925
  135. Vladimir Nabokov 1899 – 1977
  136. John Stuart Mill 1806 – 1873
  137. Antonín Dvořák 1841 – 1904
  138. Walt Whitman 1819 – 1892
  139. Eleanor Roosevelt 1884 – 1962
  140. B. R. Ambedkar 1891 – 1956
  141. James A. Garfield 1831 – 1881
  142. Martin Heidegger 1889 – 1976
  143. John Steinbeck 1902 – 1968
  144. Emily Dickinson 1830 – 1886
  145. William Howard Taft 1857 – 1930
  146. Giacomo Puccini 1858 – 1924
  147. Konrad Adenauer 1876 – 1967
  148. William Faulkner 1897 – 1962
  149. Sergei Eisenstein 1898 – 1948
  150. Grover Cleveland 1837 – 1908