← 1830 1850 →
Who was alive in 1840?
1,203 well-known people were alive in 1840, including Karl Marx, Abraham Lincoln, Leo Tolstoy. Here are the 80 most notable:
- Karl Marx (1818–1883) — German-born philosopher (1818-1883)
- Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) — president of the United States from 1861 to 1865 (1809-1865)
- Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) — Russian author (1828–1910)
- Charles Darwin (1809–1882) — English naturalist and biologist (1809–1882)
- Victor Hugo (1802–1885) — French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician (1802–1885)
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) — Russian novelist (1821–1881)
- Mark Twain (1835–1910) — American author and humorist (1835–1910)
- Charles Dickens (1812–1870) — English novelist and social critic (1812–1870)
- Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) — Danish writer and poet (1805–1875)
- Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) — American writer and literary critic (1809–1849)
- Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) — German statesman and Chancellor (1815-1898)
- Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) — French chemist and microbiologist (1822-1895)
- Richard Wagner (1813–1883) — German composer (1813–1883)
- Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) — Polish composer and pianist (1810–1849)
- Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) — German mathematician and physicist (1777–1855)
- Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) — German philosopher, sociologist and economist (1820–1895)
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) — Russian composer (1840–1893)
- Alfred Nobel (1833–1896) — Swedish chemist and inventor (1833–1896)
- Jules Verne (1828–1905) — French writer (1828–1905)
- Dmitri Mendeleev (1834–1907) — Russian chemist (1834–1907)
- Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) — Italian opera composer (1813–1901)
- Michael Faraday (1791–1867) — British scientist (1791–1867)
- Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) — French poet and critic (1821–1867)
- Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) — Japanese artist (1760-1849)
- Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) — French writer and dramatist (1802–1870)
- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) — German philosopher (1788-1860)
- Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) — French novelist and playwright (1799–1850)
- Victoria (1819–1901) — Queen of the United Kingdom from 1837 to 1901 (1819-1901)
- Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) — Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813–1855)
- Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) — Norwegian playwright and theatre director (1828–1906)
- Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) — German poet, writer and literary critic (1797–1856)
- Émile Zola (1840–1902) — French novelist, journalist, playwright, and poet (1840–1902)
- John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) — President of the United States from 1825 to 1829
- Andrew Jackson (1767–1845) — president of the United States from 1829 to 1837
- James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) — Scottish physicist (1831–1879)
- Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) — German composer (1833–1897)
- Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) — French novelist (1821–1880)
- Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) — president of the United States from 1869 to 1877
- Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) — Russian writer of Ukrainian origin (1809–1852)
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) — American philosopher (1803–1882)
- Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) — British author and scholar (1832–1898)
- Claude Monet (1840–1926) — French painter (1840–1926)
- John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) — British philosopher and political economist (1806–1873)
- Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883) — Russian writer (1818–1883)
- Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) — English social reformer, statistician, and founder of modern nursing (1820–1910)
- Walt Whitman (1819–1892) — American poet, essayist and journalist (1819–1892)
- Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) — American poet (1830-1886)
- James A. Garfield (1831–1881) — president of the United States in 1881
- Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) — President of the United States (1885–89; 1893–97)
- Martin Van Buren (1782–1862) — president of the United States from 1837 to 1841
- Andrew Johnson (1808–1875) — President of the United States from 1865 to 1869
- Zachary Taylor (1784–1850) — president of the United States from 1849 to 1850
- James Buchanan (1791–1868) — president of the United States from 1857 to 1861
- James K. Polk (1795–1849) — President of the United States from 1845 to 1849 (1795–1849)
- Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) — American essayist, poet, and philosopher (1817–1862)
- John Tyler (1790–1862) — president of the United States from 1841 to 1845
- Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) — Prussian geographer, naturalist and explorer (1769-1859)
- Millard Fillmore (1800–1874) — president of the United States from 1850 to 1853
- William Henry Harrison (1773–1841) — president of the United States in 1841
- William Wordsworth (1770–1850) — English Romantic poet (1770–1850)
- Franklin Pierce (1804–1869) — president of the United States from 1853 to 1857
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) — British statesman (1804–1881)
- Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) — president of the United States from 1877 to 1881
- Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) — French painter (1839–1906)
- Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) — Russian revolutionary anarchist and philosopher (1814–1876)
- George Eliot (1819–1880) — English novelist, essayist, poet and journalist (1819–1880)
- Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861) — Ukrainian poet and artist (1814–1861)
- Stendhal (1783–1842) — French writer (1783–1842)
- George Sand (1804–1876) — French novelist and memoirist (1804–1876)
- Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901) — President of the United States, 1889-1893 (1833–1901)
- Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) — British novelist and poet (1816-1855)
- James Prescott Joule (1818–1889) — English physicist and brewer (1818–1889)
- Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) — French painter (1780–1867)
- Auguste Comte (1798–1857) — French philosopher, mathematician and sociologist (1798–1857)
- Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) — French composer and conductor (1803–1869)
- Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) — English mathematician (1815–1852)
- Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) — Moravian scientist and Augustinian friar (1822–1884)
- Mary Shelley (1797–1851) — English writer (1797–1851)
- Emily Brontë (1818–1848) — English novelist and poet (1818–1848)
- Chester A. Arthur (1829–1886) — president of the United States from 1881 to 1885
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