55.8610° N, 4.2512° W
GLASGOW
Most Famous People Born in Glasgow, United Kingdom
- Notable people
- 3,305
- Peak decade
- 1950s
- Median birth year
- 1943
- Most distinctive
- Football 3.8×
A football city, almost unhealthily so. More than forty per cent of Glasgow's notables are footballers — Old Firm shaped a city's entire celebrity economy — and the next bench down is the actors and singers of a Scottish stage tradition that has produced James McAvoy, Robbie Coltrane, and Mark Knopfler. The 19th-century Clyde shipbuilding boom is the peak that most of the rest of the bench grew out of, and there is also an unusually deep comedy lineage from the working men's clubs that the strict statistical panel doesn't capture but that gave the world Billy Connolly.
One face per decade — the most globally famous figure born in Glasgow during each.
Notable Births by Decade
Click a decade to filter the list below. Peak: 1950s with 337 notable births.
What Glasgow Is Known For
Click any row to filter the list of people below.
Football is Glasgow's biggest profession — 42% of all notables (1,378).
Glasgow over-indexes on football — 3.8× the global rate.
Glasgow under-produces writer — only 0.6× the global rate.
Profession Mix Over Time
Each band shows a profession family's share of Glasgow's notable births by decade. Hover the chart for the breakdown at any decade.
- Sports
- Politics & Law
- Film & TV
- Writing
- Science
- Music
- Other
- Filtered to 1770s Clear ×
Thomas Campbell (poet)
1777 - 1844
Robert Stevenson (civil engineer)
1772 - 1850
Andrew Ure
1778 - 1857
Henry Aston Barker
1774 - 1856
Kirkman Finlay
1773 - 1842
John Maclean (Chemiker)
1771 - 1814