Famous birthdays by month
Famous Birthdays in August
Who was born in August? Browse the best-known birthdays for every day of the month, then tap any date to see everyone famous born on that day.
The most famous August birthdays848
1958–2009Michael Jackson
King of Pop behind Thriller, the best-selling album of all time, famous for the moonwalk and groundbreaking music videos
MusicWould be 68
View profile Photo: Matthew Rolston; Distributed by Epic Records · Public domain
1930–2012Neil Armstrong
NASA astronaut who commanded Apollo 11 and became the first person to walk on the Moon in July 1969
SpaceWould be 96
View profile Photo: NASA · Public domain
b. 1961Barack Obama
44th President of the United States and its first African American president, who passed the Affordable Care Act and won the Nobel Peace Prize
PoliticsAge 65
View profile Photo: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza · Public domain
1769–1821Napoleon
French general who seized power after the Revolution, crowned himself emperor and conquered much of Europe before defeat at Waterloo
MilitaryDied aged 51
View profile Photo: Jacques-Louis David · Public domain
1749–1832Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
German poet, playwright and scientist, author of Faust and The Sorrows of Young Werther, and a giant of European literature
LiteratureDied aged 82
View profile Photo: Joseph Karl Stieler · Public domain
b. 1966Jimmy Wales
American internet entrepreneur who co-founded Wikipedia in 2001, the free online encyclopedia written by volunteers
BusinessAge 60
View profile Photo: PhilipRomano · CC BY-SA 4.0
b. 1946Bill Clinton
42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001, who presided over a long economic boom and survived impeachment
PoliticsAge 80
View profile Photo: Bob McNeely, The White House [ 1 ] · Public domain
b. 1954François Hollande
Socialist politician who served as President of France from 2012 to 2017, a term marked by terror attacks and same-sex marriage
PoliticsAge 72
View profile Photo: Web Summit · CC BY 2.0
August birthdays, day by day
- August 1
- Herman Melville (1819) · American novelist whose Moby-Dick, about Captain Ahab's hunt for a white whale, failed in his lifetime but became a classic
- Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (1744) · French naturalist who coined the word invertebrate and proposed one of the first theories of evolution
- Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (1924) · King of Saudi Arabia from 2005 to 2015, a son of Ibn Saud who led the National Guard and made cautious reforms
- August 2
- Shimon Peres (1923) · Israeli statesman who served as prime minister and president and shared the Nobel Peace Prize for the Oslo Accords
- JD Vance (1984) · Author of the memoir Hillbilly Elegy and former senator for Ohio who became Vice President of the United States in 2025
- Peter O'Toole (1932) · British actor widely known for his starring role in Lawrence of Arabia
- August 3
- James Hetfield (1963) · Lead singer and rhythm guitarist of the heavy metal band Metallica
- Evangeline Lilly (1979) · Actress who starred in Lost and the Ant-Man film franchise
- Habib Bourguiba (1903) · First President of the Republic of Tunisia
- August 4
- Barack Obama (1961) · 44th President of the United States and its first African American president, who passed the Affordable Care Act and won the Nobel Peace Prize
- Louis Armstrong (1901) · New Orleans jazz trumpeter and singer known as Satchmo, famous for his gravelly voice and What a Wonderful World
- Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792) · English Romantic poet of Ozymandias and Ode to the West Wind, husband of Mary Shelley, who drowned in Italy at 29
- August 5
- Neil Armstrong (1930) · NASA astronaut who commanded Apollo 11 and became the first person to walk on the Moon in July 1969
- Guy de Maupassant (1850) · French master of the short story who wrote Boule de Suif and The Necklace and the novel Bel-Ami
- Marine Le Pen (1968) · French politician who led the National Rally and reached the presidential run-off in 2017 and 2022
- August 6
- Andy Warhol (1928) · American pop artist famous for his Campbell's Soup Cans and Marilyn Monroe prints and for his New York studio, the Factory
- Alexander Fleming (1881) · Scottish scientist who discovered penicillin in 1928, the first antibiotic, and shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine
- Alfred Tennyson (1809) · Victorian Poet Laureate who wrote In Memoriam, The Lady of Shalott and The Charge of the Light Brigade
- August 7
- Jimmy Wales (1966) · American internet entrepreneur who co-founded Wikipedia in 2001, the free online encyclopedia written by volunteers
- Charlize Theron (1975) · South African-American actress who won an Oscar for Monster and played Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road
- Elinor Ostrom (1933) · First woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences
- August 8
- Roger Federer (1981) · Swiss tennis champion who won 20 major singles titles and held world No. 1 for a record 237 consecutive weeks
- Paul Dirac (1902) · English physicist who predicted antimatter, wrote the Dirac equation and shared the Nobel Prize in Physics at 31
- Mohamed Morsi (1951) · Muslim Brotherhood leader who became Egypt's first democratically elected president in 2012 and was ousted by the army in 2013
- August 9
- Whitney Houston (1963) · American singer with one of pop's greatest voices, star of The Bodyguard and its record-breaking song I Will Always Love You
- Gillian Anderson (1968) · Actress famous for playing Dana Scully in The X-Files
- Jean Piaget (1896) · Swiss psychologist who pioneered the study of cognitive development in children
- August 10
- Herbert Hoover (1874) · Mining engineer and humanitarian who served as the 31st US President when the Great Depression began
- Juan Manuel Santos (1951) · Former President of Colombia and Nobel Peace Prize laureate
- Antonio Banderas (1960) · Spanish actor known for starring in The Mask of Zorro
- August 11
- Pervez Musharraf (1943) · Pakistani army chief who seized power in a 1999 coup and ruled as president until 2008
- Steve Wozniak (1950) · Computing pioneer and co-founder of the technology company Apple
- Chris Hemsworth (1983)
- August 12
- François Hollande (1954) · Socialist politician who served as President of France from 2012 to 2017, a term marked by terror attacks and same-sex marriage
- Erwin Schrödinger (1887) · Austrian physicist who devised the wave equation of quantum mechanics, won the Nobel Prize and imagined the famous cat paradox
- George Soros (1930) · Billionaire investor and philanthropist
- August 13
- Fidel Castro (1926) · Cuban revolutionary who overthrew Batista in 1959 and ruled Cuba as a communist state for nearly half a century
- Alfred Hitchcock (1899) · British director known as the Master of Suspense for thrillers including Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window and The Birds
- Frederick Sanger (1918) · Biochemist who was awarded two Nobel Prizes in Chemistry
- August 14
- John Galsworthy (1867) · English novelist of The Forsyte Saga, a family chronicle that became a famous TV series, and a Nobel laureate
- Halle Berry (1966) · American actress who became the first Black woman to win the best actress Oscar, for Monster's Ball, and played Storm in X-Men
- Mila Kunis (1983)
- August 15
- Napoleon (1769) · French general who seized power after the Revolution, crowned himself emperor and conquered much of Europe before defeat at Waterloo
- Walter Scott (1771) · Scottish novelist and poet of Waverley, Ivanhoe and Rob Roy who invented the historical novel
- Jennifer Lawrence (1990) · American actress who played Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games and won an Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook
- August 16
- Madonna (1958) · American singer known as the Queen of Pop, whose hits from Like a Virgin to Vogue and constant reinventions made her a global icon
- James Cameron (1954)
- Charles Bukowski (1920) · American poet and novelist known for his gritty depictions of life
- August 17
- Robert De Niro (1943) · American actor of Taxi Driver and Goodfellas who won Oscars for The Godfather Part II and Raging Bull
- Herta Müller (1953) · Romanian-born German novelist of The Land of Green Plums whose work about life under Ceaușescu won the Nobel Prize
- Pierre de Fermat (1601) · French lawyer and mathematician who pioneered number theory and probability and left behind the famous Last Theorem
- August 18
- Roman Polanski (1933) · French-Polish director of Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown who won an Oscar for The Pianist and fled the US in 1978
- Franz Joseph I of Austria (1830) · Long-reigning Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary
- Robert Redford (1936) · Oscar-winning actor, director and founder of the Sundance Film Festival
- August 19
- Bill Clinton (1946) · 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001, who presided over a long economic boom and survived impeachment
- Coco Chanel (1883) · French designer who founded Chanel, freed women from corsets and created the little black dress and Chanel No. 5
- Matthew Perry (1969) · Actor best known for playing Chandler Bing on Friends
- August 20
- Benjamin Harrison (1833) · 23rd US President, grandson of President William Henry Harrison, who signed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890
- Demi Lovato (1992) · American singer and actress who rose to fame in Camp Rock on the Disney Channel and had hits including Sorry Not Sorry
- Andrew Garfield (1983) · British-American actor of The Social Network and The Amazing Spider-Man who won a Tony for Angels in America
- August 21
- Usain Bolt (1986) · Jamaican sprinter who holds the 100 and 200 metres world records and won eight Olympic gold medals
- Robert Lewandowski (1988) · Polish striker widely considered one of the greatest modern footballers
- Mohammed VI of Morocco (1963) · King of Morocco and member of the Alawi dynasty
- August 22
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749) · German poet, playwright and scientist, author of Faust and The Sorrows of Young Werther, and a giant of European literature
- Deng Xiaoping (1904) · Chinese Communist leader who opened China to markets and foreign investment from 1978, setting off its economic boom
- Claude Debussy (1862) · French composer of Clair de lune, Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and La Mer, a pioneer of musical Impressionism
- August 23
- Louis XVI of France (1754) · Last king of France before the Revolution, who was overthrown in 1792 and guillotined in 1793
- Kobe Bryant (1978) · American basketball star who won five NBA titles in 20 seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers and died in a helicopter crash
- Edgar de Wahl (1867) · Baltic German teacher and linguist who created Occidental, the international auxiliary language now called Interlingue
- August 24
- Jorge Luis Borges (1899) · Argentine writer of labyrinthine short stories and essays in Ficciones and The Aleph, a giant of 20th-century literature
- Yasser Arafat (1929) · Leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization for 35 years who signed the Oslo Accords and shared the Nobel Peace Prize
- Paulo Coelho (1947) · Brazilian novelist of The Alchemist, a fable about following your dreams that is one of the best-selling books of all time
- August 25
- Sean Connery (1930) · Scottish actor who was the first screen James Bond, in Dr No, and won an Oscar for The Untouchables
- Ivan the Terrible (1530) · Grand Prince of Moscow who became the first Tsar of Russia, conquered Kazan and ruled through terror
- Johann Gottfried Herder (1744) · German philosopher and poet who influenced the Romantic movement
- August 26
- Mother Teresa (1910) · Albanian-born Catholic nun who founded the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata, won the Nobel Peace Prize and was declared a saint
- Antoine Lavoisier (1743) · French chemist who named oxygen and hydrogen, proved the conservation of mass and was guillotined during the Revolution
- Chris Pine (1980) · American actor who plays Captain James T. Kirk in the Star Trek films and Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman
- August 27
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770) · German idealist philosopher whose Phenomenology of Spirit and dialectical view of history strongly influenced Marx and modern philosophy
- Lyndon B. Johnson (1908) · 36th US President who signed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act but escalated the Vietnam War
- Ivan Franko (1856) · Influential Ukrainian poet, writer, and political activist
- August 28
- Al-Shafi'i (AD 767) · Influential Muslim scholar and founder of a school of Islamic law
- Jack Black (1969) · American comedy actor and lead singer of the rock duo Tenacious D
- José Eduardo dos Santos (1942) · Former President of Angola who led the country for 38 years
- August 29
- Michael Jackson (1958) · King of Pop behind Thriller, the best-selling album of all time, famous for the moonwalk and groundbreaking music videos
- John Locke (1632) · English Enlightenment philosopher whose ideas on natural rights and government by consent influenced the American Declaration of Independence
- Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780) · French Neoclassical painter of La Grande Odalisque and The Turkish Bath, prized for his flawless drawing and portraits
- August 30
- Ernest Rutherford (1871) · New Zealand-born physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, split the atom and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Alexander Lukashenka (1954) · Former collective farm manager who has ruled Belarus as president since 1994, often called Europe's last dictator
- Warren Buffett (1930) · American investor known as the Oracle of Omaha who built Berkshire Hathaway into a giant and pledged most of his fortune to charity
- August 31
- Caligula (AD 12) · Roman emperor whose brief reign became a byword for cruelty and madness until he was assassinated by his own guard in 41 AD
- Tsai Ing-wen (1956) · Law professor who served two terms as Taiwan's first female president, from 2016 to 2024
- Maria Montessori (1870) · Italian doctor and educator who founded the Montessori method of child-led, hands-on learning now used in schools worldwide