January 15 is the birthday of 54 notable people we've found so far, including authors, historical figures, politicians and scientists, and 1 of them is a billionaire.
Tsai Eng-meng is a Taiwanese businessman. He is best known for his leadership of the Want Want food company and his family's later acquisition of various news media companies in Taiwan. He is also chairman of the snack food company Want Want China.
Share of the 54 people we list, by documented field. People can belong to more than one.
Authors39% (21 people)
Politicians26% (14 people)
Scientists19% (10 people)
Athletes17% (9 people)
Entrepreneurs15% (8 people)
Actors11% (6 people)
Creators11% (6 people)
Countries
30 countries, most often United States
Citizenship as recorded on Wikidata, one country per person.
United States12 (12 people)
France4 (4 people)
Spain3 (3 people)
Belgium2 (2 people)
Italy2 (2 people)
Japan2 (2 people)
Poland2 (2 people)
Life timeline
What were people born on January 15 doing at your age?
Dated milestones from Wikidata (company foundings, awards, top jobs, notable works), placed at the age each person reached them. Add your birth year above to see the ones you have passed.
By 25
~8Margaret O'BrienReceived the Academy Juvenile Award (1945)
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American civil rights activist and Baptist minister who was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968.
Yoichi Okamoto, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Giorgia Meloni is an Italian politician who has served as Prime Minister of Italy since October 2022. She is the first woman to hold the office and the head of the longest-serving government in the history of the Italian Republic.
Benjamin Aaron Shapiro is an American conservative political commentator and media host. He writes columns for Creators Syndicate, Newsweek, and Ami Magazine, and is editor emeritus for The Daily Wire, which he co-founded in 2015.
Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Edward Teller was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist and chemical engineer who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" and one of the creators of the Teller–Ulam design inspired by Stanisław Ulam.
Wikimedia Commons, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Leonid Vitalyevich Kantorovich was a Soviet mathematician and economist, known for his theory and development of techniques for the optimal allocation of resources. He is regarded as the founder of linear programming.
Андрей Богданов (Andrei-bogdanoffyandex.ru), CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Thierry Jacques Lucien Breton is a French business executive, politician, and writer who served as European Commissioner for Internal Market in the first von der Leyen Commission from 2019 to 2024.
Christophe Licoppe - European Commission, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Susi Pudjiastuti is an Indonesian entrepreneur who served as the Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries of Indonesia under President Joko Widodo's 2014–2019 Working Cabinet.
Government of Indonesia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein was an Egyptian military officer and revolutionary who served as the second president of Egypt from 1954 until his death in 1970. Nasser led the Egyptian revolution of 1952 and introduced far-reaching land reforms the following year.
Regina Rene King is an American actress, director and producer. She has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and four Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2019, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Lloyd Vernet Bridges Jr. was an American film, stage and television actor who starred in a number of television series and appeared in more than 150 feature films. He was the father of four children, including the actors Beau Bridges and Jeff Bridges.
Tom Korman Assoc., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright, actor, and poet, widely regarded as one of the great writers in the French language and world literature. His extant works include comedies, farces, tragicomedies, comédie-ballets, and more.
Pierre Mignard I, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Saud bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was King of Saudi Arabia from 9 November 1953 until his abdication on 2 November 1964. During his reign, he served as Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia from 1953 to 1954 and from 1960 to 1962.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Don Van Vliet, known by his stage name Captain Beefheart, was an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and visual artist. Leading a rotating ensemble known as the Magic Band, he recorded 13 studio albums between 1967 and 1982.
Thomas Merton, religious name M. Louis, was an American Trappist monk, theologian, mystic, poet, and social activist. He was a professed member of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, near Bardstown, Kentucky, living there from 1941 to his death.
Mind meal at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French anarchist, socialist, philosopher, and economist who founded mutualist philosophy and is considered by many to be the "father of anarchism".
Martin Dúbravka is a Slovak professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur and the Slovakia national team.
@cfcunofficial (Chelsea Debs) London, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Adam Diksa, better known by his stage name Keiran Lee, is an English pornographic actor, director, and producer who works mainly for Brazzers. He is one of the highest-paid pornographic actors.
Mary Caroline Pierce is a French former professional tennis player. She was ranked world No. 3 in singles and in doubles by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA).
Mihai Eminescu was a Romanian Romantic poet, novelist, and journalist from Moldavia, generally regarded as the most famous and influential Romanian poet.
Sofya Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya was a Russian mathematician who made noteworthy contributions to analysis, partial differential equations and mechanics. She was a pioneer of equality for women in mathematics.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Essam Kamal Tawfiq El Hadary is an Egyptian goalkeeping coach and former professional football goalkeeper. Nicknamed the "High Dam", El Hadary has been described as amongst the greatest Egyptian players of all time.
Muntadhar al-Zaidi is an Iraqi broadcast journalist who served as a correspondent for Iraqi-owned, Egypt-based Al-Baghdadia TV. As of February 2011, al-Zaidi worked with a Lebanese TV channel.
Mehmed Nâzım Ran, commonly known as Nâzım Hikmet, was a Turkish poet, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, director, and memoirist. He was acclaimed for the "lyrical flow of his statements".
Hans-Joachim Koch, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Paul Lafargue was a Cuban-born French political writer, economist, journalist, literary critic, and activist. His best known work is The Right to Be Lazy. Born in Cuba to French and Creole parents, Lafargue spent most of his life in France, with periods in England and Spain.
German Fehrenbach, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Jacques Pierre Brissot, also known as Brissot de Warville, was a French journalist, abolitionist, and revolutionary leading the faction of the Girondins at the National Convention in Paris.
François Bonneville, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Martin Petyov Petrov is a Bulgarian former professional footballer who played as a winger, most notably for VFL Wolfsburg, Atletico Madrid, Manchester City, and Bolton Wanderers. He also played 90 times for Bulgaria.
Sophie Wilmès is a Belgian politician who served as the prime minister of Belgium from 2019 to 2020. She later served as minister of foreign affairs from 2020 to 2022. A member of the Reformist Movement, she is the first woman to hold either position.
Emina Jahović is a Serbian singer-songwriter. Born and raised in Novi Pazar, she made her recording debut in 2002 and has released six studio albums: Tačka (2002), Radije ranije (2005), Vila (2009), Metamorfoza (2014), Dalje (2018) and Svitanje (2025).
Michel Jean-Pierre Debré was the first Prime Minister of the French Fifth Republic. He is considered the "father" of the current Constitution of France. He served under President Charles de Gaulle from 1959 to 1962.
This page lists 54 people born on January 15, every one traced to a Wikidata record and, where shown, a Wikipedia summary (CC BY-SA) and a licensed Wikimedia Commons photo. 1 of them carry a dated net-worth estimate citing Forbes or Bloomberg; combined wealth is the sum of the low end of those estimates, the newest as of 2017. Rankings compare all 366 dates in the dataset built on 2026-09-28. Milestone ages come from dated Wikidata statements; a tilde marks year-only dates. Nothing on this page is a prediction about anyone born on January 15. Read the full methodology.
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