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
- Field: Painter Clear ×
Douglas Gordon
Born 1966
William Simpson (artist)
1823 - 1899
Muirhead Bone
1876 - 1953
David Young Cameron
1865 - 1945
Robert Walker Macbeth
1848 - 1910
Alexander Mann
1853 - 1908
Bessie MacNicol
1869 - 1904
Steven Campbell (artist)
1953 - 2007
John McHale (artist)
1922 - 1978
Scottie Wilson
1888 - 1972
Lucy McKenzie
Born 1977
William Ayerst Ingram
1855 - 1913
Horatio McCulloch
1805 - 1867
Katie Paterson
Born 1981
Alexander Ignatius Roche
1861 - 1921
William Leighton Leitch
1804 - 1883
Henry Aston Barker
1774 - 1856
Bruce McLean
Born 1944
David Murray (painter)
1849 - 1933
Thomas Corsan Morton
1859 - 1928
Paul Emsley
Born 1947
Dugald Sutherland MacColl
1859 - 1948
William Brown Macdougall
1868 - 1936
Cecile Walton
1891 - 1956
Hugh Ramsay
1877 - 1906
John Lowrie Morrison
Born 1948
Pat Douthwaite
1934 - 2002
James Nairn
1859 - 1904
Robert McGowan Coventry
1855 - 1914
Katharine Cameron
1874 - 1965
Margot Sandeman
1922 - 2009
Herbert James Gunn
1893 - 1964
John Crawford Brown
1805 - 1867
John Partridge (artist)
1789 - 1872
Daniel Cottier
1837 - 1891
Harrington Mann
1864 - 1937
Kaye Donachie
Born 1970
William Kennedy (painter)
1859 - 1918
Sheila Mullen (artist)
Born 1942
John Quinton Pringle
1864 - 1925
Thomas Lawson (artist)
Born 1951
David Gauld
1865 - 1936
James Whitelaw Hamilton
1860 - 1932
Robert Henderson Blyth
1919 - 1970
Robert Macaulay Stevenson
1854 - 1952
William Thompson Russell Smith
1812 - 1896
Leonard McComb
1930 - 2018
Joseph Morris Henderson
1863 - 1936
William McCance
1894 - 1970
Adrian Wiszniewski
Born 1958
John Graham-Gilbert
1794 - 1866
William Barr (artist)
1867 - 1933
James Morrison (artist)
Born 1932
James Lawton Wingate
1846 - 1924
Alexander Brownlie Docharty
1862 - 1940
Robert Eadie
1877 - 1954
James Fairman
1826 - 1904
John Henderson (painter)
1860 - 1924
Colin Hunter
1841 - 1904
Archibald Eliot Haswell Miller
1887 - 1979
Alexander C. Stuart
1831 - 1898
Josephine Haswell Miller
1890 - 1975
Gerard M. Burns
Born 1961
Victoria Morton
Born 1971
Bill Birrell
Born 1945
Isabel Brodie Babianska
1920 - 2006
Grace Wilson Melvin
1892 - 1977
James Meechan
Born 1930