Gérald Frère is a Belgian billionaire businessman, the chairman of Groupe Bruxelles Lambert since January 2012, and its former CEO. As of August 2024, Forbes estimated his net worth at US$3.3 billion.
Share of the 38 people we list, by documented field. People can belong to more than one.
Authors24% (9 people)
Creators24% (9 people)
Politicians24% (9 people)
Actors21% (8 people)
Entrepreneurs21% (8 people)
Scientists21% (8 people)
Musicians18% (7 people)
Countries
19 countries, most often United States
Citizenship as recorded on Wikidata, one country per person.
United States16 (16 people)
France3 (3 people)
Russia2 (2 people)
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland2 (2 people)
Argentina1 (1 people)
Belgium1 (1 people)
Brazil1 (1 people)
Life timeline
What were people born on May 17 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.
Ruhollah Mostafavi Khomeini was an Iranian politician and Shia cleric who served as the first supreme leader of Iran from 1979 until his death in 1989.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Eithne Pádraigín Ní Bhraonáin, known as Enya, is an Irish singer and composer. With an estimated equivalent of more than 80 million albums sold, she is one of the world's best-selling music artists.
Orlando Sentinel/ Associated Press, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
William Paxton was an American actor, filmmaker and musician. A versatile character actor known for his distinctive Texan drawl and everyman screen persona, he was a four-time Golden Globe Award and a Primetime Emmy Award nominee, among other accolades.
Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Robert Lane Saget was an American stand-up comedian, actor, director, and television host. He portrayed Danny Tanner on the sitcom Full House (1987–1995) and its sequel Fuller House (2016–2020).
Behind The Velvet Rope TV, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Ferenc Krausz is a Hungarian physicist working in attosecond science. He was a director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and a professor of experimental physics at LMU Munich in Germany.
Original uploaded by C.laschinger (Transfered by Syp), CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Janez Drnovšek was a Slovenian liberal politician, President of the Presidency of Yugoslavia (1989–1990), Prime Minister of Slovenia and President of Slovenia (2002–2007).
World Economic Forum from Cologny, Switzerland, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Aleksandr Vladimirovich Frolov was the CEO of Evraz in 2007-2021, one of the largest steel producers. Since 2013, the company's coal subsidiaries, consolidated under PJSC Raspadskaya in 2020, made it the largest Russian producer of coking coal.
Michael Trent Reznor is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and composer. He came to prominence as the founder, lead singer, multi-instrumentalist, and primary songwriter of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails.
Suzana Drobnjakovic, known professionally as Sasha Alexander, is an American actress. She played Gretchen Witter in Dawson's Creek (2000-2001) and appeared in such films as Yes Man (2008) and He's Just Not That Into You (2009).
Mingle MediaTV, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
William Anthony Parker Jr. is a French-American professional basketball coach and former player who currently serves as the head coach of LDLC ASVEL of the French LNB Élite and the EuroLeague.
Christopher Johnson, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Craig Ferguson is a Scottish and American actor, comedian, writer and television host. He hosted the CBS late-night talk show The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005–2014), for which he won a Peabody Award for his interview with South African archbishop Desmond Tutu in 2009.
Kassym-Jomart Kemeluly Tokayev is a Kazakh politician and diplomat who has served as the second president of Kazakhstan since 2019. He previously served as Prime Minister from 1999 to 2002 and as Chairman of the Senate from 2007 to 2011 and again from 2013 to 2019.
Қазақстан премьер-министрі, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Eric Alfred Leslie Satie, better known as Erik Satie, was a French composer and pianist. The son of a French father and a British mother, he studied at the Paris Conservatoire but was undistinguished and did not obtain a diploma.
Sonia y natalia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
1749–1823 · United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Edward Jenner was an English physician and scientist who pioneered the concept of vaccines and created the smallpox vaccine, the world's first vaccine. The terms vaccine and vaccination are derived from Variolae vaccinae, the term devised by Jenner to denote cowpox.
James Northcote, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Howard Elliott Ashman was an American playwright, lyricist, and stage director. He is most widely known for his work on feature films for Walt Disney Animation Studios, for which Ashman wrote the lyrics and Alan Menken composed the music.
Alan Curtis Kay is an American computer scientist who pioneered work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface (GUI) design. At Xerox PARC he led the design and development of the first modern windowed computer desktop interface.
Marcin Wichary from San Francisco, U.S.A., CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Mohamed Nasheed GCSK, also known as Anni, is a Maldivian politician and activist who served as the fourth president of the Maldives from 2008 until his controversial resignation in 2012.
Joseph Michael Acabá is an American educator, hydrogeologist, and NASA astronaut. In May 2004, he became the first person of Puerto Rican ancestry to be named as a NASA astronaut candidate, when he was selected as a member of NASA Astronaut Training Group 19.
Stanisław Moniuszko was a Polish composer, conductor, organist and pedagogue. He wrote many popular art songs and operas, including The Haunted Manor and Halka, and his music is filled with patriotic folk themes of the peoples of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Tytus Maleszewski, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
1836–1920 · United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer was an English scientist and astronomer. Along with the French scientist Pierre Janssen, he is credited with discovering the gas helium. Lockyer also is remembered for being the founder and first editor of the influential journal Nature.
not indicated, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Achim Steiner is a senior fellow of the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford, and founding director of the Security Futures Lab. He also serves as chair of the Hamburg Sustainability Conference.
John Francis Mercer was a Founding Father of the United States, politician, lawyer, planter, and slave owner from Virginia and Maryland. An officer during the Revolutionary War, Mercer initially served in the Virginia House of Delegates and then the Maryland State Assembly.
Scan by NYPL, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Odd Hassel was a Norwegian physical chemist and Nobel Laureate. His major focus was on problems related to molecular structure, and his research helped contribute to the development of the concept of conformation and its application in chemistry.
Unknown authorUnknown author, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
This page lists 38 people born on May 17, 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 August 2024. 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 May 17. Read the full methodology.
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