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
- Field: Diplomat Clear ×
Joseph Grew
1880 - 1965
Adolf A. Berle
1895 - 1971
Peter Galbraith
Born 1950
Alexander Vershbow
Born 1952
Mark Andrew Green
Born 1960
Nathaniel Davis
1925 - 2011
Alexander Hill Everett
1792 - 1847
John Moors Cabot
1901 - 1981
Jeffrey Davidow
Born 1944
Rufus Gifford
Born 1974
Richard B. Wigglesworth
1891 - 1960
Maurice Halperin
1906 - 1995
James Bowdoin III
1752 - 1811
Maxwell M. Rabb
1910 - 2002
Ken Hackett
Born 1947
Alan Solomont
Born 1957
Carolina Barco
Born 1951
Henry Percival Dodge
1870 - 1936
Walter L. Cutler
Born 1931
Philip Goldberg
Born 1956
Francis J. Ricciardone Jr.
Born 1951
Sarah Sewall
Born 1961
William Jarvis (merchant)
1770 - 1859
Richard W. Murphy
Born 1929
Ellis Loring Dresel
1865 - 1925
John Temple (diplomat)
1731 - 1798
Laurence Foley
1942 - 2002
Marcie Berman Ries
Born 1950
John Gardner Coolidge
1863 - 1936
Robert Anderson (diplomat)
1922 - 1996
David George Newton
Born 1935
Richard Wayne Bogosian
Born 1937
Alexander Watson (diplomat)
Born 1939
Theodore L. Eliot Jr.
1928 - 2019
George Harrington
1815 - 1892
Harry E. T. Thayer
1927 - 2017
Marilyn P. Johnson
Born 1922