November 17 is the birthday of 46 notable people we've found so far, including authors, entrepreneurs, actors and creators, and 2 of them are billionaires.
Robin Li Yanhong is a Chinese software engineer and billionaire internet entrepreneur who is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Chinese multinational technology company Baidu. As of May 2025, his net worth was estimated at US$5.5 billion by Forbes.
Jerónimo Julio Arango Arias was a Mexican billionaire businessman, co-founder of the Aurrerá supermarket chain, with his younger brothers, Manuel and Plácido, known for a long time as three of Mexico's wealthiest men.
Share of the 46 people we list, by documented field. People can belong to more than one.
Authors33% (15 people)
Actors26% (12 people)
Entrepreneurs26% (12 people)
Creators20% (9 people)
Politicians17% (8 people)
Scientists15% (7 people)
Musicians13% (6 people)
Countries
22 countries, most often United States
Citizenship as recorded on Wikidata, one country per person.
United States16 (16 people)
France4 (4 people)
Japan3 (3 people)
United Kingdom3 (3 people)
Canada2 (2 people)
Australia1 (1 people)
Brazil1 (1 people)
Life timeline
What were people born on November 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.
Rachel Anne McAdams is a Canadian actress. A graduate of York University in 2001 with a BFA in theatre, she is known for her starring roles in comedy and drama films as well as her work in television and theater.
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American filmmaker. One of the major figures of the New Hollywood era, he is widely considered one of the greatest and most influential directors in the history of cinema.
Harald Krichel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Rock Hudson was an American actor. One of the most popular film stars of his time, he had a screen career spanning more than three decades, and was a prominent figure in the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Universal Pictures/ Photographer not credited [1], Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Leslie Louise Bibb is an American actress and model. She first received wider attention for playing Brooke McQueen on the WB teen series Popular (1999–2001).
Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa is a South African businessman and politician who is serving as the fifth president of South Africa since 2018. A former anti-apartheid activist and trade union leader, Ramaphosa is also the president of the African National Congress (ANC).
Ricardo Stuckert, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
John Andrew Boehner is an American retired politician and lobbyist who served as the 53rd speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2011 to 2015.
United States Government, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
James Mountain Inhofe was an American politician who served from 1994 to 2023 as a United States senator from Oklahoma. A member of the Republican Party, he was the longest-serving U.S. senator from Oklahoma.
United States Senate Photography, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Soichiro Honda was a Japanese engineer and industrialist. In 1948, he established Honda Motor Co., Ltd. and oversaw its expansion from a wooden shack manufacturing bicycle motors to a multinational automobile and motorcycle manufacturer.
Remment Lucas Koolhaas is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist, and Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.
Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design from Moscow, Russia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Michael Cannon-Brookes is an Australian billionaire and businessman who is the co-founder and chief executive officer of the software company Atlassian, a Forbes Global 2000 company.
Jeffrey Scott Buckley was an American musician. After a decade as a session guitarist in Los Angeles, he attracted a following in the early 1990s performing at venues in the East Village, Manhattan. He signed with Columbia and released his only studio album, Grace, in 1994.
Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, was a senior British Army officer who served in the First World War, the Irish War of Independence, and the Second World War.
Possibly Edward George William Malindine, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Gordon Meredith Lightfoot Jr. was a Canadian singer-songwriter who achieved worldwide success and helped define the singer-songwriter era of the 1970s.
Sophie Marceau is a French actress. As a teenager, she achieved popularity with her debut films La Boum (1980) and La Boum 2 (1982), receiving a César Award for Most Promising Actress.
Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Luís Carlos Almeida da Cunha, commonly known as Nani, is a Portuguese professional footballer who plays as a winger for Kazakhstan Premier League club Aktobe. He is known for his pace, flair and work ethic.
Кирилл Венедиктов, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Rance Howard was an American actor who starred in film and on television. He was the father of actor and filmmaker Ron Howard and actor Clint Howard, and grandfather of actresses Bryce Dallas Howard and Paige Howard.
Henry IV was Holy Roman Emperor (1084–1105), King of Germany (1054–1105), and King of Italy and Burgundy (1056–1105). A Salian ruler, he was the son of Henry III and Agnes of Poitou.
AnonymousUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was a Russian and Soviet psychologist, best known for his work on psychological development in children and creating the framework known as cultural-historical activity theory.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Chanda Kochhar is an Indian banker. She was the MD and CEO of ICICI Bank from 2009 to 2018 She resigned from her positions in 2018 due a case of conflict of interest. Subsequently, she was fired by ICICI Bank, a decision which was later upheld by the Supreme Court of India.
World Economic Forum on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Nicolas Appert was a French confectioner and inventor who, in the early 19th century, invented airtight food preservation. Appert, known as the "father of food science", described his invention as a way "of conserving all kinds of food substances in containers".
Édouard Foucaud, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Étienne Jacques-Joseph-Alexandre Macdonald, 1st duc de Tarente, was a Marshal of the Empire and military leader during the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars.
Antoine-Jean Gros, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Joost van den Vondel was a Dutch playwright, poet, literary translator and writer. He is generally regarded as the greatest writer in the Dutch language as well as an important figure in the history of Western literature.
Philips Koninck, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Pierre Charles Nora was a French historian elected to the Académie Française on 7 June 2001. As editor at Éditions Gallimard, he established the Library of Social Sciences in 1966 and the Library of Histories in 1970.
Adam Johann von Krusenstern was a Russian admiral and explorer of Swedish and Baltic German descent, who led the first Russian circumnavigation of the Earth in 1803–1806.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Stanley Cohen was an American biochemist who, along with Rita Levi-Montalcini, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1986 for the isolation of nerve growth factor and the discovery of epidermal growth factor.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Bernardino Telesio was an Italian philosopher and natural scientist. While his natural theories were later disproven, his emphasis on observation made him the "first of the moderns" who eventually developed the scientific method.
Raffaello Sanzio Morghen (1758–1833), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Kim Sung-gan was a South Korean football player and manager. He played 5 matches for the Japan national team when Korea was ruled by Japan, including 1 official match. He was the manager of the South Korean football team that won the 1956 AFC Asian Cup.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
This page lists 46 people born on November 17, every one traced to a Wikidata record and, where shown, a Wikipedia summary (CC BY-SA) and a licensed Wikimedia Commons photo. 2 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 May 2025. 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 November 17. Read the full methodology.
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