Who Was Alive

Who was alive in 1781?

97 of the people we track were surely alive in 1781. The best known are listed first, with the age each reached that year.

Died in 1781: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.

  1. Napoleon12
  2. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe32
  3. George Washington49
  4. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart25
  5. Ludwig van Beethoven9–13
  6. Immanuel Kant57
  7. Thomas Jefferson38
  8. Adam Smith58
  9. Benjamin Franklin75
  10. Jane Austen6
  11. Carl Friedrich Gauss4
  12. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel11
  13. Leonhard Euler74
  14. John Adams46
  15. Francisco Goya35
  16. Friedrich Schiller22
  17. Katsushika Hokusai21
  18. James Madison30
  19. John Quincy Adams14
  20. Andrew Jackson14
  21. William Blake24
  22. James Watt45
  23. Joseph Haydn49
  24. James Monroe23
  25. Catherine II of Russia52
  26. Denis Diderot68
  27. Alexander von Humboldt12
  28. William Wordsworth11
  29. William Henry Harrison8
  30. Walter Scott10
  31. Thomas Paine44
  32. Samuel Johnson72
  33. Marie Antoinette26
  34. Maximilien Robespierre23
  35. Joseph Fourier13
  36. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres1
  37. Antoine Lavoisier38
  38. Mary Wollstonecraft22
  39. Pierre-Simon Laplace32
  40. Louis XVI of France27
  41. Frederick II of Prussia69
  42. Edmund Burke52
  43. Robert Burns22
  44. Samuel Taylor Coleridge9
  45. André-Marie Ampère6
  46. Alessandro Volta36
  47. Jean Le Rond d'Alembert64
  48. William Herschel43
  49. Edward Jenner32
  50. Johann Gottlieb Fichte19
  51. Novalis9
  52. John Dalton15
  53. Alexander I of Russia4
  54. Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck37
  55. George III of Great Britain43
  56. Carl von Clausewitz1
  57. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing52 †
  58. Giacomo Casanova56
  59. Marquis de Sade41
  60. Jeremy Bentham33
  61. Thomas Robert Malthus15
  62. Edward Gibbon44
  63. Horatio Nelson23
  64. Joseph-Louis Lagrange45
  65. Alexander Hamilton24
  66. Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington12
  67. Johann Gottfried Herder37
  68. Humphry Davy3
  69. Charles-Augustin de Coulomb45
  70. Hans Christian Ørsted4
  71. Gregory XVI16
  72. Wilhelm von Humboldt14
  73. David Ricardo9
  74. Isabelle de Charrière41
  75. Pius VII39
  76. William IV16
  77. Friedrich Hölderlin11
  78. Amedeo Avogadro5
  79. Pierre-Augustin de Beaumarchais49
  80. Klemens von Metternich8
  81. Carlo Goldoni74
  82. Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord27
  83. Paul I of Russia27
  84. Jacques-Louis David33
  85. George IV of the United Kingdom19
  86. François-Auguste-René de Chateaubriand13
  87. Joseph Priestley48
  88. Georges Danton22
  89. Leo XII21
  90. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling6
  91. E. T. A. Hoffmann5
  92. Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon74
  93. Thomas Young8
  94. Caspar David Friedrich7
  95. Pius VI64
  96. Henry Cavendish50
  97. Germaine de Staël15