Famous People in History

202 rulers, thinkers, artists, travellers and reformers from Hammurabi to Mandela, each placed on the map of their time with the cities they are linked to.

Europe

Lived	Person
c. 1810 BC – 1750 BC	Hammurabi	King of Babylon
c. 685 BC – 631 BC	Ashurbanipal	King of Assyria
c. 634 BC – 562 BC	Nebuchadnezzar II	King of Babylon
c. 600 BC – 530 BC	Cyrus the Great	Founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire
495 BC – 429 BC	Pericles	Athenian statesman
c. 484 BC – 425 BC	Herodotus	Historian
470 BC – 399 BC	Socrates	Philosopher
c. 428 BC – 348 BC	Plato	Philosopher
384 BC – 322 BC	Aristotle	Philosopher
356 BC – 323 BC	Alexander the Great	King of Macedon
c. 325 BC – 265 BC	Euclid	Mathematician
c. 287 BC – 212 BC	Archimedes	Mathematician and inventor
c. 247 BC – 183 BC	Hannibal	Carthaginian general
106 BC – 43 BC	Cicero	Orator and statesman
100 BC – 44 BC	Julius Caesar	Roman general and dictator
70 BC – 19 BC	Virgil	Poet
69 BC – 30 BC	Cleopatra VII	Queen of Egypt
63 BC – AD 14	Augustus	First Roman emperor
c. 4 BC – AD 30	Jesus of Nazareth	Central figure of Christianity
c. AD 100 – AD 170	Ptolemy	Astronomer and geographer
AD 121 – AD 180	Marcus Aurelius	Roman emperor and philosopher
AD 272 – AD 337	Constantine the Great	Roman emperor
AD 354 – AD 430	Augustine of Hippo	Theologian
c. AD 355 – AD 415	Hypatia	Philosopher and mathematician
AD 482 – AD 565	Justinian I	Byzantine emperor
c. AD 742 – AD 814	Charlemagne	King of the Franks and emperor
c. AD 763 – AD 809	Harun al-Rashid	Abbasid caliph
c. AD 780 – AD 850	al-Khwarizmi	Mathematician
AD 849 – AD 899	Alfred the Great	King of Wessex
1028 – 1087	William the Conqueror	King of England
c. 1043 – 1099	El Cid	Castilian knight
1126 – 1198	Averroes (Ibn Rushd)	Philosopher
1137 – 1193	Saladin	Sultan of Egypt and Syria
1138 – 1204	Maimonides	Jewish philosopher and physician
1194 – 1250	Frederick II	Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily
1225 – 1274	Thomas Aquinas	Theologian
1254 – 1324	Marco Polo	Merchant and traveller
1265 – 1321	Dante Alighieri	Poet
c. 1267 – 1337	Giotto	Painter and architect
1304 – 1369	Ibn Battuta	Traveller
1304 – 1374	Petrarch	Poet and humanist
1332 – 1406	Ibn Khaldun	Historian
c. 1372 – 1415	Jan Hus	Church reformer
1394 – 1460	Henry the Navigator	Portuguese prince
c. 1400 – 1468	Johannes Gutenberg	Inventor of printing
c. 1412 – 1431	Joan of Arc	French national heroine
1432 – 1481	Mehmed II	Ottoman sultan
1449 – 1492	Lorenzo de’ Medici	Ruler of Florence
1451 – 1506	Christopher Columbus	Navigator
1452 – 1519	Leonardo da Vinci	Painter and inventor
c. 1469 – 1524	Vasco da Gama	Navigator
1469 – 1527	Niccolò Machiavelli	Political thinker
1471 – 1528	Albrecht Dürer	Painter and printmaker
1473 – 1543	Nicolaus Copernicus	Astronomer
1475 – 1564	Michelangelo	Sculptor, painter and architect
c. 1478 – 1541	Francisco Pizarro	Spanish conquistador
c. 1480 – 1521	Ferdinand Magellan	Navigator
1483 – 1546	Martin Luther	Reformer
1483 – 1520	Raphael	Painter
1485 – 1547	Hernán Cortés	Spanish conquistador
1494 – 1566	Suleiman the Magnificent	Ottoman sultan
1500 – 1558	Charles V	Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain
1509 – 1564	John Calvin	Reformer
1527 – 1598	Philip II	King of Spain
1533 – 1603	Elizabeth I	Queen of England
1547 – 1616	Miguel de Cervantes	Writer
1552 – 1610	Matteo Ricci	Jesuit missionary
1564 – 1616	William Shakespeare	Playwright and poet
1564 – 1642	Galileo Galilei	Scientist
1571 – 1629	Shah Abbas I	Safavid shah
1577 – 1640	Peter Paul Rubens	Painter
1596 – 1650	René Descartes	Philosopher and mathematician
1603 – 1659	Abel Tasman	Navigator
1606 – 1669	Rembrandt	Painter
1632 – 1677	Baruch Spinoza	Philosopher
1638 – 1715	Louis XIV	King of France
1643 – 1727	Isaac Newton	Scientist
1672 – 1725	Peter the Great	Tsar of Russia
1685 – 1750	Johann Sebastian Bach	Composer
1694 – 1778	Voltaire	Enlightenment writer
1712 – 1778	Jean-Jacques Rousseau	Philosopher
1724 – 1804	Immanuel Kant	Philosopher
1728 – 1779	James Cook	Navigator
1729 – 1796	Catherine the Great	Empress of Russia
1749 – 1832	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe	Writer
1756 – 1791	Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart	Composer
1769 – 1849	Muhammad Ali Pasha	Ruler of Egypt
1769 – 1821	Napoleon Bonaparte	Emperor of the French
1770 – 1827	Ludwig van Beethoven	Composer
1802 – 1885	Victor Hugo	Writer
1807 – 1882	Giuseppe Garibaldi	Leader of Italian unification
1809 – 1882	Charles Darwin	Naturalist
1810 – 1849	Frédéric Chopin	Composer and pianist
1815 – 1898	Otto von Bismarck	Chancellor of Germany
1818 – 1883	Karl Marx	Philosopher and economist
1819 – 1901	Queen Victoria	Queen of the United Kingdom
1821 – 1881	Fyodor Dostoevsky	Writer
1828 – 1910	Leo Tolstoy	Writer
1840 – 1893	Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky	Composer
1856 – 1939	Sigmund Freud	Founder of psychoanalysis
1867 – 1934	Marie Curie	Physicist and chemist
1870 – 1924	Vladimir Lenin	Bolshevik leader
1874 – 1965	Winston Churchill	British prime minister
1878 – 1953	Joseph Stalin	Soviet leader
1879 – 1955	Albert Einstein	Physicist
1881 – 1938	Mustafa Kemal Atatürk	Founder of the Republic of Turkey
1883 – 1924	Franz Kafka	Writer
1890 – 1970	Charles de Gaulle	President of France
1918 – 1970	Gamal Abdel Nasser	President of Egypt

Asia

Lived	Person
c. 563 BC – 483 BC	Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha	Founder of Buddhism
551 BC – 479 BC	Confucius	Philosopher and teacher
550 BC – 486 BC	Darius I	King of Persia
c. 340 BC – 297 BC	Chandragupta Maurya	Founder of the Maurya Empire
c. 304 BC – 232 BC	Ashoka	Maurya emperor
259 BC – 210 BC	Qin Shi Huang	First Emperor of China
256 BC – 195 BC	Liu Bang (Emperor Gaozu of Han)	Founder of the Han dynasty
c. 164 BC – 113 BC	Zhang Qian	Envoy and explorer
156 BC – 87 BC	Emperor Wu of Han	Han emperor
c. 145 BC – 86 BC	Sima Qian	Historian
AD 155 – AD 220	Cao Cao	Warlord and poet
AD 161 – AD 223	Liu Bei	Founder of Shu Han
AD 181 – AD 234	Zhuge Liang	Chancellor of Shu Han
AD 303 – AD 361	Wang Xizhi	Calligrapher
AD 574 – AD 622	Prince Shōtoku	Regent of Japan
AD 598 – AD 649	Emperor Taizong of Tang	Tang emperor
AD 602 – AD 664	Xuanzang	Buddhist monk and translator
AD 624 – AD 705	Wu Zetian	China’s only empress regnant
AD 701 – AD 762	Li Bai	Poet
AD 712 – AD 770	Du Fu	Poet
AD 877 – AD 943	Wang Geon (Taejo of Goryeo)	Founder of Goryeo
AD 927 – AD 976	Zhao Kuangyin (Emperor Taizu of Song)	Founder of the Song dynasty
c. AD 973 – 1014	Murasaki Shikibu	Writer
AD 980 – 1037	Avicenna (Ibn Sina)	Physician and philosopher
1014 – 1077	Anawrahta	King of Pagan
1037 – 1101	Su Shi	Writer, painter and calligrapher
1103 – 1142	Yue Fei	Southern Song general
c. 1122 – 1218	Jayavarman VII	Khmer king
1147 – 1199	Minamoto no Yoritomo	First Kamakura shogun
c. 1162 – 1227	Genghis Khan	Founder of the Mongol Empire
1207 – 1273	Rumi	Poet and Sufi mystic
c. 1210 – 1291	Saadi	Poet
1215 – 1294	Kublai Khan	Founder of the Yuan dynasty
c. 1315 – 1390	Hafez	Poet
1328 – 1398	Zhu Yuanzhang (Hongwu Emperor)	Founder of the Ming dynasty
1336 – 1405	Timur (Tamerlane)	Founder of the Timurid Empire
1360 – 1424	Zhu Di (Yongle Emperor)	Ming emperor
1371 – 1433	Zheng He	Admiral and explorer
1394 – 1449	Ulugh Beg	Astronomer and ruler
1397 – 1450	Sejong the Great	King of Joseon
1471 – 1529	Krishnadevaraya	Emperor of Vijayanagara
1483 – 1530	Babur	Founder of the Mughal Empire
1534 – 1582	Oda Nobunaga	Warlord
1537 – 1598	Toyotomi Hideyoshi	Unifier of Japan
1542 – 1605	Akbar	Mughal emperor
1543 – 1616	Tokugawa Ieyasu	First Tokugawa shogun
1545 – 1598	Yi Sun-sin	Korean admiral
1592 – 1666	Shah Jahan	Mughal emperor
1618 – 1707	Aurangzeb	Mughal emperor
1654 – 1722	Kangxi Emperor	Qing emperor
1711 – 1799	Qianlong Emperor	Qing emperor
1780 – 1839	Ranjit Singh	Maharaja of the Sikh Empire
1781 – 1826	Stamford Raffles	British colonial official
1785 – 1850	Lin Zexu	Qing official
1835 – 1908	Empress Dowager Cixi	De facto ruler of Qing China
1852 – 1912	Emperor Meiji	Emperor of Japan
1853 – 1910	Chulalongkorn (Rama V)	King of Siam
1861 – 1941	Rabindranath Tagore	Poet
1861 – 1896	José Rizal	Filipino national hero
1866 – 1925	Sun Yat-sen	Founder of the Republic of China
1869 – 1948	Mahatma Gandhi	Leader of Indian independence
1876 – 1948	Muhammad Ali Jinnah	Founder of Pakistan
1889 – 1964	Jawaharlal Nehru	First prime minister of India
1890 – 1969	Ho Chi Minh	Vietnamese revolutionary leader

Africa

Lived	Person
c. 1341 BC – 1323 BC	Tutankhamun	Pharaoh of Egypt
c. 1303 BC – 1213 BC	Ramesses II	Pharaoh of Egypt
c. AD 320 – AD 360	Ezana of Aksum	King of Aksum
c. AD 570 – AD 632	Muhammad	Prophet of Islam
c. 1280 – 1337	Mansa Musa	Emperor of Mali
c. 1443 – 1538	Askia Muhammad	Emperor of Songhai
c. 1583 – 1663	Queen Nzinga	Queen of Ndongo and Matamba
c. 1660 – 1717	Osei Tutu	Founder of the Asante Empire
1844 – 1913	Menelik II	Emperor of Ethiopia
1892 – 1975	Haile Selassie I	Emperor of Ethiopia
c. 1897 – 1978	Jomo Kenyatta	First president of Kenya
1909 – 1972	Kwame Nkrumah	First leader of Ghana
1918 – 2013	Nelson Mandela	President of South Africa

Americas

Lived	Person
c. 1418 – 1471	Pachacuti	Sapa Inca
c. 1466 – 1520	Moctezuma II	Aztec emperor
c. 1502 – 1533	Atahualpa	Sapa Inca
c. 1574 – 1635	Samuel de Champlain	Explorer
c. 1648 – 1695	Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz	Poet and scholar
1706 – 1790	Benjamin Franklin	Scientist and statesman
1732 – 1799	George Washington	First president of the United States
1743 – 1826	Thomas Jefferson	Third president of the United States
1746 – 1792	Tiradentes	Forerunner of Brazilian independence
1778 – 1850	José de San Martín	Leader of South American independence
1783 – 1830	Simón Bolívar	Liberator of South America
1806 – 1872	Benito Juárez	President of Mexico
1809 – 1865	Abraham Lincoln	Sixteenth president of the United States
1825 – 1891	Pedro II of Brazil	Emperor of Brazil
1853 – 1895	José Martí	Cuban poet and independence leader

Elsewhere

Lived	Person
c. 1758 – 1819	Kamehameha I	King of Hawaiʻi

Last updated 9 November 2026. Sources: border data from historical-basemaps, land and rivers from Natural Earth; texts written for Chronica Maps from standard reference works. How we make the maps.