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 1820s Clear ×
William Simpson (artist)
1823 - 1899
James Hutchison Stirling
1820 - 1909
Thomas Annan
1829 - 1887
Alexander Maclaren
1826 - 1910
Alexander Hay Ritchie
1822 - 1895
John Elder (shipbuilder)
1824 - 1869
Thomas Haughey
1826 - 1869
Peter Barr (nurseryman)
1826 - 1909
John G. Campbell
1827 - 1903
John Burdon (bishop)
1826 - 1907
Robert Rainy
1826 - 1906
Isabella Elder
1828 - 1905
Peter Donahue (businessman)
1822 - 1885
William Milne (politician)
1822 - 1895
Katherine Clerk Maxwell
1824 - 1886
James Fairman
1826 - 1904
Thomas Turnbull
1824 - 1907
John Simpson Knox
1828 - 1897
George Robertson (bookseller)
1825 - 1898
Robert Brown (New Zealand botanist)
1820 - 1906
John Nicol Crombie
1827 - 1878
William Durie Lyon
1825 - 1893
Daniel Marquis
1829 - 1879
John Buttery
1829 - 1912
Stevenson Macadam
1829 - 1901
Andrew Cathcart Bogle
1829 - 1890
John Harper (mayor)
1825 - 1874
George Rodgers (VC)
1829 - 1870
Robert Wallace (Canadian politician)
1820 - 1899
Thomas Gardiner (publisher)
1826 - 1899
Robert Adam Lyon
1829 - 1901
Beatrice Clugston
1827 - 1888
John Sinclair (mayor)
1827 - 1906
Robert Hervey
1820 - 1903
James Samuel
1824 - 1874
Robert Blackburn (politician)
1828 - 1894
James Miller (VC 1857)
1820 - 1892
David Chalmers (Scottish industrialist)
1820 - 1899
John MacFarlane (Queensland politician)
1823 - 1880
John MacFarlane (Ipswich)
1829 - 1894
James Turner (Canadian politician)
1826 - 1889