50.4500° N, 30.5237° E

KIEV

Most Famous People Born in Kiev, Ukraine

Notable people

1,654

Peak decade

1980s

Median birth year

1963

Most distinctive

Skater 9.8×

A Rus' capital that has been reinvented every few centuries and still carries every layer in the bench. Kiev's distinctive professions are figure skaters, chess masters, fencers, gymnasts, and pianists — the legacy of a long Soviet athletic and conservatory school — alongside the princes and princesses of the 10th- and 11th-century Rurikid dynasty. Bulgakov, Malevich, Golda Meir, Vladimir Horowitz, and Igor Sikorsky all belong to this bench, born within a few decades of each other in a city that then scattered them.