January 4 is the birthday of 38 notable people we've found so far, including authors, creators, historical figures and actors, and 1 of them is a billionaire.
Richard Oetker is a German billionaire heir and businessman, who in 2010 became CEO of multinational food processing company Dr. Oetker. In 1976 he was kidnapped by Dieter Zlof, a Slovene-born mechanic, and only released after a substantial ransom was paid.
Share of the 38 people we list, by documented field. People can belong to more than one.
Authors24% (9 people)
Creators21% (8 people)
Actors16% (6 people)
Entrepreneurs16% (6 people)
Politicians16% (6 people)
Athletes13% (5 people)
Scientists13% (5 people)
Countries
16 countries, most often United States
Citizenship as recorded on Wikidata, one country per person.
United States10 (10 people)
United Kingdom6 (6 people)
France4 (4 people)
Germany4 (4 people)
Japan2 (2 people)
Kingdom of Great Britain2 (2 people)
Canada1 (1 people)
Life timeline
What were people born on January 4 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
~12Daryl SabaraNotable work: The Polar Express (2004)
Sir Isaac Newton was an English polymath who was a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, author and inventor. He was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment that followed.
James Thronill after Sir Godfrey Kneller, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Victor Wembanyama, nicknamed "Wemby" and "the Alien", is a French professional basketball player for the San Antonio Spurs of the National Basketball Association (NBA).
Frenchieinportland, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
James Philip Milner is an English former professional footballer. A versatile player, he played in multiple positions, including on the wing, in midfield, and at full-back.
Steffen Prößdorf, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Gao Xingjian is a Chinese émigré and later French naturalized novelist, playwright, critic, painter, photographer, film director, and translator who in 2000 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity."
Celestine Ann "Tina" Beyoncé Knowles is an American businesswoman, fashion designer, author, and philanthropist known for establishing the brands House of Deréon and Miss Tina by Tina Knowles.
Catherine Servel, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Everett McKinley Dirksen was an American politician. A Republican, he represented Illinois in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate.
Richard Hood Harryman, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Paul Guy Desmarais Sr. was a Canadian financier and philanthropist, based in Montreal. With an estimated family net worth of US$4.5 billion, Desmarais was ranked by Forbes as the fourth wealthiest person in Canada, and 235th in the world in 2013.
Emma Margaret Marie Tachard-Mackey is a British-French actress. She is widely known for her breakthrough performance as a troubled teenager in the Netflix comedy-drama series Sex Education (2019–2023) earned her nomination for the British Academy Television Award.
Toni Kroos is a German former professional footballer who played as a midfielder. Regarded as one of the greatest midfielders of all time, he was known for his vision and pinpoint precision passing.
https://www.youtube.com/@realmadrid, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Dyan Cannon is an American actress, filmmaker, and editor. Her accolades include a Saturn Award, a Golden Globe Award, three Academy Award nominations, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Daryl Christopher Sabara is an American actor. He is known for portraying Juni Cortez in the Spy Kids film series, and for a variety of television and film appearances, first as a child actor and continuing into adult roles, including voice roles.
Julian Richard Morley Sands was an English actor. He had co-starring roles in Oxford Blues and The Killing Fields in 1984. The following year, Sands played George Emerson in A Room with a View; this role became his breakout role.
Julia Karin Ormond is an English actress. She rose to prominence during the 1990s by appearing in Legends of the Fall (1994), First Knight (1995) and Sabrina (1995).
Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
John McLaughlin, also previously known as Mahavishnu, is an English guitarist, bandleader, and composer. A pioneer of jazz fusion, his music combines elements of jazz with rock, world music, Western classical music, flamenco, and blues.
Буньков Денис, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Louis Braille was a French educator and the inventor of a reading and writing system named after him, braille, intended for use by visually impaired people. His system is used worldwide and remains virtually unchanged to this day.
Henri Thiriat, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Carlos Saura Atarés was a Spanish film director, photographer and writer. With Luis Buñuel and Pedro Almodóvar, he is considered to be among Spain's great filmmakers. He had a long and prolific career that spanned over half a century, and his films won many international awards.
Carlos Delgado, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Hsieh Su-wei is a Taiwanese professional tennis player. A former world No. 1 in doubles with nine Grand Slam titles, she is regarded as one of the most successful and versatile doubles players in history.
Günter Schabowski was a German politician who served as an official of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, the ruling party during most of the existence of East Germany. After climbing up the party ladder, he became the regime's unofficial spokesman.
Giovanni Battista Draghi, usually referred to as Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, was an Italian Baroque composer, violinist, and organist, leading exponent of the Baroque; he is considered one of the greatest Italian musicians of the first half of the 18th century and one of the…
Domenico Antonio Vaccaro, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
James Bond was an American ornithologist and expert on the birds of the Caribbean, having written the definitive book on the subject: Birds of the West Indies, first published in 1936. He served as a curator of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.
Jerry Freilich, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Zurab Konstantinovich Tsereteli was a Georgian painter, sculptor and architect known for large-scale and at times controversial monuments. Tsereteli served as the President of the Russian Academy of Arts from 1997 until his death.
May-Britt Moser is a Norwegian psychologist and neuroscientist, who is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
NTNU Trondheim, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Robert Reese Parrish was an American film editor, director and actor. He won an Academy Award for Best Film Editing for his work on Body and Soul (1947).
1813–1897 · United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Sir Isaac Pitman was an English publisher and teacher of the English language who developed the most widely used system of shorthand, known now as Pitman shorthand. He first proposed this in Stenographic Soundhand in 1837. He was vice-president of the Vegetarian Society.
Wikimedia Commons, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Rudolf Schuster is a Slovak politician who served as the second president of Slovakia from 1999 to 2004. He was elected on 29 May 1999 and inaugurated on 15 June. In the presidential elections of April 2004, in which he sought re-election, Schuster was defeated.
Marián Gladiš, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Richard Royce Schrock is an American chemist and Nobel laureate recognized for his contributions to the olefin metathesis reaction used in organic chemistry.
R._Schrock_-_IChO_2012_Opening_Ceremony.JPG: A.mela93 derivative work: Materialscientist, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Muhammad bin Fahd Al Saud was a Saudi prince, politician, and philanthropist who served as governor of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia from 1985 to 2013.
George Albert Smith was an English stage hypnotist, psychic, magic lantern lecturer, Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, inventor and a key member of the loose association of early film pioneers dubbed the Brighton School by French film historian Georges Sadoul.
National Media Museum from UK, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
This page lists 38 people born on January 4, 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 October 2021. 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 4. Read the full methodology.
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