42.3449° N, 71.0753° W
BOSTON
Most Famous People Born in Boston, United States
- Notable people
- 3,663
- Peak decade
- 1950s
- Median birth year
- 1926
- Most distinctive
- Novelist 3.5×
America's oldest civic intelligentsia. Boston's notables are unusually concentrated in the 1700s and 1800s by American standards, and the distinctive shelves still read like a Yankee almanac — novelists, lawyers, military officers, mathematicians, and diplomats, the trades of a city where Harvard, the State House, and the Old North Church share a few square miles. The modern half tilts more conventionally toward Red Sox baseball, actors, and a deep college-bred music scene.
One face per decade — the most globally famous figure born in Boston during each.
Notable Births by Decade
Click a decade to filter the list below. Peak: 1950s with 348 notable births.
What Boston Is Known For
Click any row to filter the list of people below.
Actor is Boston's biggest profession — 9% of all notables (314).
Boston over-indexes on novelist — 3.5× the global rate.
Boston under-produces football — only 0.2× the global rate.
Profession Mix Over Time
Each band shows a profession family's share of Boston's notable births by decade. Hover the chart for the breakdown at any decade.
- Politics & Law
- Sports
- Writing
- Film & TV
- Science
- Music
- Other
- Filtered to 1780s Clear ×
David Porter (naval officer)
1780 - 1843
Frederic Tudor
1783 - 1864
Josiah Snelling
1782 - 1828
James Frothingham
1786 - 1864
William Parmenter
1789 - 1866
Leonard Jarvis
1781 - 1854
Eliza Lee Cabot Follen
1787 - 1860
James Savage (banker)
1784 - 1873
Lucius Manlius Sargent
1786 - 1867
John Perkins Cushing
1787 - 1862
James T. Austin
1784 - 1870
Phokion Heinrich Clias
1782 - 1854
Elisha Collier
1788 - 1856
Charles Wells (American politician)
1786 - 1866
Charles Russell Lowell Sr.
1782 - 1861
Samuel Cooper Thacher
1785 - 1818
Samuel Cabot Jr.
1784 - 1863
Eliza Townsend
1788 - 1854