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 1840s Clear ×
Thomas Lipton
1848 - 1931
William Wilson Hunter
1840 - 1900
William Black (novelist)
1841 - 1898
Robert Barr (writer)
1849 - 1912
Robert Walker Macbeth
1848 - 1910
George "Bay" Middleton
1846 - 1892
Charles Immanuel Forsyth Major
1843 - 1923
John Watson (philosopher)
1847 - 1939
Thomas Barclay (missionary)
1849 - 1935
David Murray (painter)
1849 - 1933
Thomas Buchanan (Liberal politician)
1846 - 1911
John Nugent Fitch
1840 - 1927
Thomas Algernon Chapman
1842 - 1921
John Millar Thomson
1849 - 1933
Mary Hannay Foott
1846 - 1918
George McCulloch (mine owner)
1848 - 1907
Thomas McEwan (painter)
1846 - 1914
James Lawton Wingate
1846 - 1924
Walter Owen
1844 - 1953
Colin Hunter
1841 - 1904
David Creighton
1843 - 1917
Adam Bogle
1848 - 1915
Robert Harper (Australian politician)
1842 - 1919
John Kirkwood Leys
1847 - 1909
Marshall Campbell
1848 - 1917
John Thompson (Medal of Honor)
Born 1842
Alexander Arthur
1846 - 1912
Meredith Jemima Brown
1845 - 1908
John Arthur (rugby union)
1848 - 1921
A. W. Dobbie
1843 - 1912
Christian Guthrie Wright
1844 - 1907
Murray Hall (politician)
1841 - 1901
James Sibree Anderson
1841 - 1927
William Burns Smith
1844 - 1917
Charles Chalmers Bryce
1848 - 1895
Thomas Macdonald-Paterson
1844 - 1906
James Stedman Dixon
1845 - 1911
John Ross (businessman)
1840 - 1876
John W. Crawford
Born 1846
Robert Barbour (Victorian politician)
1845 - 1914
William Maxwell (co-operator)
1841 - 1929
James Macfarlane
1844 - 1914