List of Famous people who born in 1940

Ruriko Asaoka , born 2 July 1940 in Xinjing, Manchukuo, is a Japanese actress. She won the Medal with Purple Ribbon (2002) and Order of the Rising Sun, 4th Class, Gold Rays with Rosette (2011). She married actor Koji Ishizaka in 1971 after appearing in the same TV drama. They separated in an amicable divorce in 2000 after a nearly 30-year marriage due to Ishizaka’s desire to care for his aging mother. Asaoka made her acting debut in 1955 and has appeared in many Films and TV shows including Goyokin, Machibuse and the television series Zatoichi with Shintaro Katsu. In recent years, she has mainly worked on stage in addition to the occasional television appearance.

Donna Mills is an American actress. She began her television career in 1966 with a recurring role on The Secret Storm, and in the same year appeared on Broadway in the Woody Allen comedy Don't Drink the Water. She made her film debut the following year in The Incident. She then starred for three years in the soap opera Love is a Many Splendored Thing (1967–70), before starring as Tobie Williams, the girlfriend of Clint Eastwood's character in the 1971 cult film Play Misty for Me.

Helga Schubert is a German psychologist and author.

Donald Arvid Nelson is an American former professional basketball player and head coach. Nelson has the most regular season wins of any coach in NBA history, with 1,335. He coached the Milwaukee Bucks, the New York Knicks, the Dallas Mavericks, and the Golden State Warriors. After an All-American career at the University of Iowa, Nelson won five NBA championships playing with the Boston Celtics, with his number 19 retired by the franchise in 1978.

Stephen M. Ross is an American real estate developer, philanthropist, and sports team owner. Ross is the chairman and majority owner of The Related Companies, a global real estate development firm he founded in 1972. Related is best known for developing the Time Warner Center, where Ross lives and works, as well as the Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project. According to Forbes magazine, Ross has a net worth of $7.6 billion in 2020, ranking him 185 on Forbes Billionaires List in 2020. Ross is also the principal owner of the Miami Dolphins and Hard Rock Stadium. In 2020, his net worth had increased to $7.6 billion, according to Forbes.

Charles Anthony Palmer-Tomkinson is an English landowner and philanthropist, a former Olympic skier, and a close friend of Prince Charles.

Veniamin Borisovich Smekhov is a Soviet and Russian actor of stage and screen, and a director of the stage, television and documentary film. He was the winner of the Petropol Award (2000) as well as the Tsarskoselsky Artistic Prize (2009). He refused the title of People's Artist of Russia, which was offered to him on his 70th birthday.

Gopichand Parmanand Hinduja is an Indian-born British billionaire businessman, the co-chairman of the Hinduja Group. As of May 2020, together with his brother Srichand he is the UK's second richest man. Since the 1990s, he has been consistently ranked among the UK and Asia's wealthiest people. In May 2017, Hinduja topped the Sunday Times Rich List with an estimated wealth of GBP 16.2 billion. Based on the rich list compiled by Asian Media & Marketing Group, Hinduja's wealth is estimated at GBP 19 billion. The Forbes List in March 2018 ranked him and his brother GP as the world's 55th richest billionaire family with an estimated wealth of $19.5 billion.

Robert Edward Murray was an American mining engineer and businessman. He founded and was the chief executive officer of Murray Energy, a mining corporation based in St. Clairsville, Ohio, until it filed for bankruptcy. Murray was widely criticized for his denial of climate change, and his actions following the Crandall Canyon Mine collapse.

Kip Stephen Thorne is an American theoretical physicist known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics. A longtime friend and colleague of Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan, he was the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) until 2009 and is one of the world's leading experts on the astrophysical implications of Einstein's general theory of relativity. He continues to do scientific research and scientific consulting, most notably for the Christopher Nolan film Interstellar. Thorne was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Rainer Weiss and Barry C. Barish "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves".