List of Famous people who are 78

William Drayton is a social entrepreneur. Drayton was named by U.S. News & World Report as one of America's 25 Best Leaders in 2005. He is responsible for the rise of the phrase "social entrepreneur", a concept first found in print in 1972.

Sylvester Stewart, better known by his stage name Sly Stone, is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer who is most famous for his role as frontman for Sly and the Family Stone, playing a critical role in the development of soul, funk, rock, and psychedelia in the 1960s and 1970s.

Dame Rose Tremain is an English novelist, short story writer, and former Chancellor of the University of East Anglia.

Friedrich E. Wagner is a German physicist and emeritus professor who specializes in plasma physics. He was known to have discovered the high-confinement mode of magnetic confinement in fusion plasmas while working at the ASDEX tokamak in 1982. For this discovery and his subsequent contributions to fusion research, was awarded the John Dawson Award in 1987, the Hannes Alfvén Prize in 2007 and the Stern–Gerlach Medal in 2009.

Pat O'Connor is a BAFTA-winning Irish film director.