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.

Through the Decades

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 football3.8× the global rate.

Glasgow under-produces writer — only 0.6× the global rate.

  1. Football1,378
  2. Politician239
  3. Actor203
  4. Player95
  5. Singer72
  6. Painter68
  7. Writer63
  8. Music48
  1. Football1,3783.8×
  1. Writer630.6×
  2. Politician2390.6×

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.

160016501700175018001850190019502000
  • Sports
  • Politics & Law
  • Film & TV
  • Writing
  • Science
  • Music
  • Other
All3,305
Sort By

Showing 32 of 3,305 notable people

0010 POLITICIAN

John A. Macdonald

1815 - 1891

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0026 DETECTIVE

Allan Pinkerton

1819 - 1884

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0085 HISTORIAN

William Muir

1819 - 1905

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0161 CHEMIST

James Young (chemist)

1811 - 1883

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0176 BOTANIST

Thomas Thomson (botanist)

1817 - 1878

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0214 CHEMIST

Robert Angus Smith

1817 - 1884

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0227 ILLUSTRATOR

Walter Hood Fitch

1817 - 1892

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0236 JUDGE

Arthur MacArthur Sr.

1815 - 1896

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0313 BOTANIST

George Gardner (botanist)

1812 - 1849

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0323 GEOLOGIST

Andrew Ramsay (geologist)

1814 - 1891

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0401 LINGUIST

John Muir (indologist)

1810 - 1882

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0545 MATHEMATICIAN

Archibald Smith

1813 - 1872

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0705 POLITICIAN

James McCulloch

1819 - 1893

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0954 POLITICIAN

Arthur Macalister

1818 - 1883

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1116 WRITER

Marion Kirkland Reid

1815 - 1902

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1199 ENGINEER

Walter Montgomerie Neilson

1819 - 1889

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1220 MISSIONARY

John Murdoch (literary evangelist)

1819 - 1904

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1338 BUSINESS

Isaac Buchanan

1810 - 1883

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1363 SCULPTOR

Patric Park

1811 - 1855

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1409 POET

William Miller (poet)

1810 - 1872

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1412 PAINTER

William Thompson Russell Smith

1812 - 1896

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1505 ACTOR

James Robertson Anderson

1811 - 1895

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1599 BUSINESS

James Maclaren

1818 - 1892

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1880 POLITICIAN

James Swan (mayor of Brisbane)

1811 - 1891

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1962 JOCKEY

William Cross Yuille

1819 - 1894

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2349 WRITER

Jane Cross Simpson

1811 - 1886

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2385 POLITICIAN

William Taylor (Victorian politician)

1818 - 1903

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2457 POLITICIAN

Daniel Galbraith

1813 - 1879

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2526 MISSING

Hugh McInnes

1815 - 1879

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2893 POLITICIAN

Robert Gibbons

1811 - 1898

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3235 POLITICIAN

William McGill (politician)

1814 - 1883

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3256 POLITICIAN

John MacFarlane (New South Wales politician)

1813 - 1873

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