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
Steve Johns (drummer)
Born 1960
Dan Barry (umpire)
1886 - 1947
Harry Foote Hodges
1860 - 1929
Louis Mettling
1884 - 1907
William S. Bond (Medal of Honor)
1839 - 1892
Eugene Hultman
1875 - 1945
Dan Blum
Born 1958
George F. Loring
Died 1918
R. Lawrence Edwards
Born 1953
Thomas S. Eisenstadt
Born 1936
Frank Leith Jones
-
Christopher Rojik
Born 1974
Dan Long (baseball)
1867 - 1929
William P. Winchester
1801 - 1850
Adelaide Avery Claflin
1846 - 1931
Anthony Gianelly
1876 - 2009
John F. O'Halloran
1914 - 1968
Thomas Edwards (TJAG)
1753 - 1806
Richard Caples
1921 - 2002
Alfred G. Redfield
1929 - 2019
Ida M. Eliot
1836 - 1923
Bethany Alvord
Born 1957
Benjamin Pierce Cheney Jr.
1866 - 1942
Phillip Sidney Coolidge
1830 - 1863
George Sanderson (politician)
-
S. Howard Voshell
1888 - 1937
David B. Williams (politician)
1919 - 1994
Algernon Coolidge
1860 - 1912
Diethard Böhme
Born 1941
Salvatore Rabbio
Born 1934
Elisha Cutler Jr.
1816 - 1849
Peter K. Babalas
1922 - 1987
Arthur S. Collins Jr.
1915 - 1984
Lewis J. Ingalls
1857 - 1913
John A. Shelburne
1894 - 1978
Edward Hyde Rice
1847 - 1895
Sarah Gooll Putnam
1851 - 1912
John Smith (Medal of Honor, born 1831)
Born 1831
Sy Rosenthal
1903 - 1969
Howard Johnson (Altsaxophonist)
1905 - 1991
Joshua Macht
-
Charlie Wrack
1899 - 1979
Thomas Welsh (Mediziner)
1752 - 1831
James Sumner (baseball)
1851 - 1881
Elwood G. Babbit
Born 1871
William H. Angoff
1920 - 1993
Flora Foster
1898 - 1914
Michael LoPresti Jr.
1947 - 2004
Nat Johnson
1883 - 1921
Susan Hinckley Bradley
1851 - 1929
Nathaniel Smibert
1734 - 1756
Alfred John Lill Jr.
1880 - 1956
Laura Schirmer Mapleson
1862 - 1894
Robert Means Lawrence
1847 - 1935
Abbie Howard Hunt Stuart
1840 - 1902
William Chauncey Rice
1878 - 1941
Charles Hallett Wing
1836 - 1915
Mary Whittemore
Born 1913
Walter F. Morris Jr.
-
Philip D. Wilson Jr.
1920 - 2016
Emily Gillmore Alden
Born 1834
Sumner Z. Kaplan
1920 - 2011
John Kolsti
Born 1935