39.9292° N, 75.2300° W
PHILADELPHIA
Most Famous People Born in Philadelphia, USA
- Notable people
- 5,575
- Peak decade
- 1940s
- Median birth year
- 1928
- Most distinctive
- Baseball 6.0×
The original American capital, then the capital of nothing in particular, then a sports town. Philadelphia's notables run thick through the 18th century — lawyers, philanthropists, financiers — and then settle into a long, steady output of baseball players, basketball players, jazz bandleaders, and character actors. The city has one of the highest shares of notables in organized labor of the early 20th century and one of the deepest benches of soul singers of the late 20th.
Standouts
Notable Births by Decade
Click a decade to filter the list below. Peak: 1940s with 556 notable births.
What Philadelphia Is Known For
Click any row to filter the list of people below.
Politician is Philadelphia's biggest profession — 9% of all notables (482).
Philadelphia over-indexes on baseball — 6.0× the global rate.
Philadelphia under-produces football — only 0.4× the global rate.
Profession Mix Over Time
Each band shows a profession family's share of Philadelphia's notable births by decade. Hover the chart for the breakdown at any decade.
- Sports
- Politics & Law
- Film & TV
- Music
- Writing
- Art & Design
- Other
- Field: Lawyer Clear ×
John J. McCloy
1895 - 1989
Richard Rush
1780 - 1859
Nicholas Katzenbach
1922 - 2012
William Bradford (Attorney General)
1755 - 1795
William M. Meredith
1799 - 1873
James P. McGranery
1895 - 1962
William Francis Gibbs
1886 - 1967
George W. Pepper
1867 - 1961
Rod Rosenstein
Born 1965
Howard Roffman
Born 1953
Larry Klayman
Born 1951
Douglas J. Feith
Born 1953
Norman T. Whitaker
1890 - 1975
Joseph Reed Ingersoll
1786 - 1868
Charles Jared Ingersoll
1782 - 1862
John Church Hamilton
1792 - 1882
James M. Beck
1861 - 1936
John Cadwalader (jurist)
1805 - 1879
Joseph Hopkinson
1770 - 1842
William Lashner
Born 1956
James Kinsey
1731 - 1803
John G. Johnson
1840 - 1917
Horace Binney
1780 - 1875
Dave Jones (politician)
Born 1962
Charles John Biddle
1819 - 1873
John M. Read
1797 - 1874
Francis Wharton
1820 - 1889
Gil Stein (ice hockey)
Born 1928
Fred F. Fielding
Born 1939
George A. Bicknell
1815 - 1891
William Moore (statesman)
1735 - 1793
William Rawle
1759 - 1836
George Gray Leiper
1786 - 1868
Edwin Milton Abbott
1877 - 1940
William Allen (loyalist)
1704 - 1780
Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander
1898 - 1989
David F. Girard-diCarlo
Born 1943
Risa Vetri Ferman
Born 1965
Thomas Lee (New Jersey)
1780 - 1856
Joseph Biles Anthony
1795 - 1851
David Brooks (politician)
1756 - 1838
Jed S. Rakoff
Born 1943
Myer Feldman
1914 - 2007
Deborah K. Ross
Born 1963
James Milnor
1773 - 1845
Raymond J. Broderick
1914 - 2000
Thomas Irwin
1785 - 1870
Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
1823 - 1915
Samuel Wells Morris
1786 - 1847
Ronald M. Shapiro
Born 1943
Goler T. Butcher
1925 - 1993
Arlin M. Adams
1921 - 2015
Lynne Abraham
Born 1941
Jane Richards Roth
Born 1935
George Howard Earle Jr.
1856 - 1928
Kermit Lipez
Born 1941
Charles Alan Wright
1927 - 2000
William Bradford Reed
1806 - 1876
Deborah Batts
1947 - 2020
Howard Shelanski
Born 1964
Andrew Sherman
Born 1961
Joseph George Rosengarten
1835 - 1921
Michael M. Baylson
Born 1939
Stanley Sporkin
1932 - 2020
Thomas Sergeant
1782 - 1860
Clarence B. Jones
Born 1931
Roger Gregory
Born 1953
Roberts Vaux
1786 - 1836
Robert T. Conrad
1810 - 1858
Richard Howell Gleaves
1819 - 1907
George Hugh Smith
1834 - 1915
John Rogers (baseball)
1844 - 1910
Glenn A. Fine
Born 1950
Lawrence W. Pierce
1924 - 2020
Robert Magaw
1738 - 1790
Albert Cardozo
1828 - 1885
Alison Nathan
Born 1972
Cyrus Woods
1861 - 1938
Edward Roy Becker
1933 - 2006
Janis Lynn Sammartino
Born 1950
Ed Morgan (professor)
Born 1955
Anthony G. Amsterdam
Born 1935
John Pittenger
1930 - 2009
Janet Bond Arterton
Born 1944
Jan E. DuBois
Born 1931
Anne Elise Thompson
Born 1934
Vanita Gupta
Born 1974
Jay Rabinowitz (jurist)
1927 - 2001
Florence Bird
1908 - 1998
Gus Cifelli
1926 - 2009
John E. Murray Jr.
1932 - 2015
Mark A. Kearney
Born 1962
Charles Merrill Hough
1858 - 1927
F. Carroll Brewster
1825 - 1898
George Bethune Adams
1845 - 1911
Simon Sterne
1839 - 1901
Mark R. Kravitz
1950 - 2012
Daniel Dougherty
1826 - 1892
Hampton L. Carson (lawyer)
1852 - 1929
James S. Green (attorney)
1792 - 1862
William J. Castagna
Born 1924
William Coleman (judge)
1704 - 1769
Horace Stern
1878 - 1969
Sydney George Fisher
1856 - 1927
Peter York Solmssen
Born 1955
Gerald Austin McHugh Jr.
Born 1954
Susan R. Bolton
Born 1951
Albert F. Sabo
1920 - 2002
Jonathan Shurberg
1963 - 2017
Henry E. Petersen
1921 - 1991
William H. Ginsburg
1943 - 2013
Albert Branson Maris
1893 - 1989
William Swain Lee
Born 1935
Joseph James Farnan Jr.
Born 1945
John W. Lord Jr.
1901 - 1972
Lee Solomon
Born 1954
Robert N. C. Nix Jr.
1928 - 2003
Petrese B. Tucker
Born 1951
Jim Eisenhower
-
Herbert J. Hutton
1937 - 2007
Steven P. Perskie
Born 1945
John Thomas Taylor
1886 - 1965
Louis Charles Bechtle
Born 1927
Mitchell S. Goldberg
Born 1959
Cynthia M. Rufe
Born 1948
Timothy J. Savage
Born 1946
John Milton Younge
Born 1955
William S. Duffey Jr.
Born 1952
John R. Padova
Born 1935
Adolph A. Hoehling Jr.
1868 - 1941
Charles Louis McKeehan
1876 - 1925
Joseph Reed (lawyer)
1771 - 1846
Fred Anton
Born 1934
W. Wilson White
1906 - 1964
Richard B. Teitelman
1947 - 2016
Arthur Alan Wolk
Born 1943
Charles R. Weiner
1922 - 2005
James Patrick Rossiter
1890 - 1943
Clifford Scott Green
1923 - 2007
Wilma B. Liebman
Born 1950
Frank J. Lynch
1922 - 1987
Jerry Segal
Born 1941
Herbert Allan Fogel
Born 1929
James McGirr Kelly
1928 - 2005
Eli Kirk Price II
1860 - 1933
Moses Hampton Todd
1845 - 1935
Paul B. Higginbotham
Born 1954
Norma Levy Shapiro
1928 - 2016
James L. English
1813 - 1889
Richie Phillips
1940 - 2013
Elwood Evans
1828 - 1898
Jeffrey Bossert Clark
Born 1967
Stephen Levin
Born 1932
William M. McSwain
Born 1969
F. Emmett Fitzpatrick
1930 - 2014
Martin A. Herman
Born 1939
Henry A. Lyons
1809 - 1872
Marc Kligman
Born 1970
Joseph Simon Lord III
1912 - 1991
John Waldron (lawyer)
-
Wesley S. Williams Jr.
Born 1942
Francis Shunk Brown
1858 - 1940
Alfred Leopold Luongo
1920 - 1986
Thomas E. Franklin (lawyer)
1810 - 1884
Moses Levy
1757 - 1826
B. Mitchell Simpson
1932 - 2019
Mitchell Harry Cohen
1904 - 1991
William H. Brown III
Born 1928
Harry Ellis Kalodner
1896 - 1977
Renée Jacobs
-
Thomas Ambrose Masterson
1927 - 2000
David C. Weiss
Born 1956
George Hussey Earle Sr.
1823 - 1907
Thomas M. Madden
1907 - 1976
Archibald Randall
1797 - 1846
James C. Crumlish Jr.
1920 - 1992
Joseph Modeste Sweeney
1920 - 2000
I. Raymond Kremer
1921 - 1999
Vance A. Funk III
Born 1942
Richard L. Fox
-
P. Frederick Rothermel
1850 - 1929
Charles William Kraft Jr.
1903 - 2002
Joseph Leo McGlynn Jr.
1925 - 1999
Edwin DeHaven Steel Jr.
1904 - 1986
Thomas W. Sutherland
1817 - 1859