Who Was Alive
William Rowan Hamilton
Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

William Rowan Hamilton

British mathematician and astronomer

Born 4 August 1805 · died 2 September 1865, aged 60
Also known as Sir William Rowan Hamilton, Hamilton, Hamilton Mathematics Institute

Who was alive at the same time as William Rowan Hamilton?

  1. Thomas Jefferson, 1743 – 1826
  2. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749 – 1832
  3. Ludwig van Beethoven, c. 1770 – 1827
  4. Napoleon, 1769 – 1821
  5. Lord Byron, 1788 – 1824
  6. Alexander Pushkin, 1799 – 1837
  7. Victor Hugo, 1802 – 1885
  8. Hans Christian Andersen, 1805 – 1875
  9. William Rowan Hamilton, 1805 – 1865
  10. Edgar Allan Poe, 1809 – 1849
  11. Abraham Lincoln, 1809 – 1865
  12. Charles Darwin, 1809 – 1882
  13. Charles Dickens, 1812 – 1870
  14. Karl Marx, 1818 – 1883
  15. Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1821 – 1881
  16. Leo Tolstoy, 1828 – 1910
  17. Mark Twain, 1835 – 1910
  18. Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844 – 1900
  19. Thomas Edison, 1847 – 1931
  20. Vincent van Gogh, 1853 – 1890
  21. Oscar Wilde, 1854 – 1900
  22. Sigmund Freud, 1856 – 1939
  23. Anton Chekhov, 1860 – 1904
  24. Rabindranath Tagore, 1861 – 1941

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 William Rowan Hamilton was born, Napoleon was 35, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was 55, Victor Hugo was 3, Alexander Pushkin was 6 and Hans Christian Andersen was under a year old.

When William Rowan Hamilton died, Karl Marx was 47, Leo Tolstoy was 36, Charles Darwin was 56, Victor Hugo was 63 and Vincent van Gogh was 12.

Born during William Rowan Hamilton’s lifetime: Karl Marx, Abraham Lincoln, Leo Tolstoy, Charles Darwin, Vincent van Gogh, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche and Thomas Edison.

Not quite contemporaries: Albert Einstein was born about 14 years after William Rowan Hamilton died, Vladimir Lenin was born about 5 years after William Rowan Hamilton died, Mahatma Gandhi was born about 4 years after William Rowan Hamilton died and Joseph Stalin was born about 13 years after William Rowan Hamilton died.

What happened in William Rowan Hamilton’s lifetime

Where William Rowan Hamilton’s contemporaries were born

William Rowan Hamilton 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 William Rowan Hamilton

The 150 best-known contemporaries

799 of the people we track were surely alive at the same time as William Rowan Hamilton. The 150 best known are listed here. See also everyone alive in 1835.

  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. Rabindranath Tagore 1861 – 1941
  17. Alexander Pushkin 1799 – 1837
  18. Hans Christian Andersen 1805 – 1875
  19. Anton Chekhov 1860 – 1904
  20. Thomas Jefferson 1743 – 1826
  21. Edgar Allan Poe 1809 – 1849
  22. Oscar Wilde 1854 – 1900
  23. Lord Byron 1788 – 1824
  24. Otto von Bismarck 1815 – 1898
  25. Nikola Tesla 1856 – 1943
  26. Louis Pasteur 1822 – 1895
  27. Richard Wagner 1813 – 1883
  28. Jane Austen 1775 – 1817
  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. John Adams 1735 – 1826
  41. Francisco Goya 1746 – 1828
  42. George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950
  43. Max Planck 1858 – 1947
  44. Arthur Conan Doyle 1859 – 1930
  45. Michael Faraday 1791 – 1867
  46. Giuseppe Verdi 1813 – 1901
  47. Charles Baudelaire 1821 – 1867
  48. Dmitri Mendeleev 1834 – 1907
  49. Hokusai 1760 – 1849
  50. James Madison 1751 – 1836
  51. Honoré de Balzac 1799 – 1850
  52. Queen Victoria 1819 – 1901
  53. Simón Bolívar 1783 – 1830
  54. Arthur Schopenhauer 1788 – 1860
  55. Franz Schubert 1797 – 1828
  56. Alexandre Dumas 1802 – 1870
  57. Max Weber 1864 – 1920
  58. Henrik Ibsen 1828 – 1906
  59. Søren Kierkegaard 1813 – 1855
  60. Heinrich Heine 1797 – 1856
  61. John Quincy Adams 1767 – 1848
  62. Émile Zola 1840 – 1902
  63. Andrew Jackson 1767 – 1845
  64. David Hilbert 1862 – 1943
  65. James Clerk Maxwell 1831 – 1879
  66. William Blake 1757 – 1827
  67. Johannes Brahms 1833 – 1897
  68. Anatole France 1844 – 1924
  69. Alexander Graham Bell 1847 – 1922
  70. Octave Mirbeau 1848 – 1917
  71. James Watt 1736 – 1819
  72. Gustave Flaubert 1821 – 1880
  73. Ulysses S. Grant 1822 – 1885
  74. Joseph Haydn 1732 – 1809
  75. James Monroe 1758 – 1831
  76. Nikolai Gogol c. 1809 – c. 1852
  77. Lewis Carroll 1832 – 1898
  78. Wilhelm Röntgen 1845 – 1923
  79. Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 – 1882
  80. Claude Monet 1840 – 1926
  81. Guy de Maupassant 1850 – 1893
  82. Selma Lagerlöf 1858 – 1940
  83. Robert Louis Stevenson 1850 – 1894
  84. W. B. Yeats 1865 – 1939
  85. Ivan Turgenev 1818 – 1883
  86. Florence Nightingale 1820 – 1910
  87. Gustav Mahler 1860 – 1911
  88. John Stuart Mill 1806 – 1873
  89. Antonín Dvořák 1841 – 1904
  90. Walt Whitman 1819 – 1892
  91. James A. Garfield 1831 – 1881
  92. Emily Dickinson 1830 – 1886
  93. William Howard Taft 1857 – 1930
  94. Giacomo Puccini 1858 – 1924
  95. Martin Van Buren 1782 – 1862
  96. Grover Cleveland 1837 – 1908
  97. John Keats 1795 – 1821
  98. Andrew Johnson 1808 – 1875
  99. Henry David Thoreau 1817 – 1862
  100. Zachary Taylor 1784 – 1850
  101. James Buchanan 1791 – 1868
  102. James K. Polk 1795 – 1849
  103. Arthur Rimbaud 1854 – 1891
  104. John Tyler 1790 – 1862
  105. Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 – 1822
  106. Mikhail Bakunin 1814 – 1876
  107. William McKinley 1843 – 1901
  108. Alexander von Humboldt 1769 – 1859
  109. William Wordsworth 1770 – 1850
  110. Millard Fillmore 1800 – 1874
  111. L. L. Zamenhof 1859 – 1917
  112. William Henry Harrison 1773 – 1841
  113. Walter Scott 1771 – 1832
  114. Franklin Pierce 1804 – 1869
  115. Rutherford B. Hayes 1822 – 1893
  116. Paul Cézanne 1839 – 1906
  117. Henryk Sienkiewicz 1846 – 1916
  118. Benjamin Disraeli 1804 – 1881
  119. Taras Shevchenko 1814 – 1861
  120. George Eliot 1819 – 1880
  121. Henri Bergson 1859 – 1941
  122. Swami Vivekananda 1863 – 1902
  123. George Sand 1804 – 1876
  124. Stendhal 1783 – 1842
  125. James Prescott Joule 1818 – 1889
  126. Benjamin Harrison 1833 – 1901
  127. Thomas Paine 1737 – 1809
  128. Hector Berlioz 1803 – 1869
  129. Charlotte Brontë 1816 – 1855
  130. Knut Hamsun 1859 – 1952
  131. Gregor Mendel 1822 – 1884
  132. Joseph Fourier 1768 – 1830
  133. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres 1780 – 1867
  134. Mary Shelley 1797 – 1851
  135. Auguste Comte 1798 – 1857
  136. Ada Lovelace 1815 – 1852
  137. Paul Gauguin 1848 – 1903
  138. Giuseppe Garibaldi 1807 – 1882
  139. Chester A. Arthur 1829 – 1886
  140. Maurice Maeterlinck 1862 – 1949
  141. Robert Schumann 1810 – 1856
  142. Emily Brontë 1818 – 1848
  143. Herman Melville 1819 – 1891
  144. Auguste Rodin 1840 – 1917
  145. Antoni Gaudí 1852 – 1926
  146. Henri Poincaré 1854 – 1912
  147. Pierre Curie 1859 – 1906
  148. Claude Debussy 1862 – 1918
  149. Wilhelm II 1859 – 1941
  150. Adam Mickiewicz 1798 – 1855