List of Famous people who are 78

Alberto João Cardoso Gonçalves Jardim, GCC, GCIH is a Portuguese politician who was the President of the Regional Government of Madeira, Portugal, from 1978 to 2015. He is a controversial political figure in Portugal.

Stan Barrett is a Hollywood stuntman, stunt coordinator actor, and former stock car racing driver. His biggest act was however outside the movie world. On December 17, 1979, he attempted to break the land speed record, and the sound barrier in the Budweiser Rocket rocket-powered three-wheel vehicle. His calculated speed was 739.666 miles per hour,, which would have made Barrett the first man to break the sound barrier in a land vehicle. The attempt was surrounded by controversy and the speed was never officially recorded. Barrett also raced in 19 Winston Cup Series races between 1980 and 1990, posting two top ten finishes.

Robert Donald Cabana is the director of NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center, a NASA astronaut, and a veteran of four Space Shuttle flights. He served as Chief of the Astronaut Office from 1994 to 1997. He is also a former naval flight officer and naval aviator in the United States Marine Corps.

Bruce Peter Weitz is an American actor who is perhaps best known for his role as Sgt. Michael "Mick" Belker in the NBC police drama Hill Street Blues, which ran from 1981 until 1987. Weitz won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 1984 for his role in the series.

Manfred Schell is a German trade unionist. Before he retired in 2008, he was the leader of Gewerkschaft Deutscher Lokomotivführer.

Francisca Wilhelmina "Cisca" Dresselhuys was the first head editor of the Dutch feminist monthly magazine Opzij from 1 November 1981 until 1 April 2008. Her journalistic career started at the daily Trouw.

Johann Deisenhofer is a German biochemist who, along with Hartmut Michel and Robert Huber, received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1988 for their determination of the first crystal structure of an integral membrane protein, a membrane-bound complex of proteins and co-factors that is essential to photosynthesis.