Of course you can do it.
Everything you write, including the style you use, dates your work. The everyday technology you use, the cars driven, the clothes worn, everything, dates your work. There is no such thing as a book that isn't dated the moment it's written.
If you omit something because people may not know it or him, you may as well not write. I don't know who ANY of your characters are, but it doesn't stop me from reading about them. And if you're really worried about readers not knowing who someone is, there are plenty of words and sentences you can use to let them know.
Really, we write about all sorts of characters who don't even exist, but writers worry readers may not know one who actually does exist? Yeah, that makes sense.
Anyway, there is nothing wrong with dating your book, and if you think you can write a book that isn't dated, you're fooling yourself. Nor does it matter. If dating mattered, no one would read the classics, and every writer from Shakespeare to Dickens would be unknown today because no one would read them. And none of them would have used any real figures in their works because readers might not know them, especially a hundred or more years later.