List of Famous people who born in 1940

Khaled Sultan Bin Essa is a member of the Kuwaiti National Assembly, representing the second district. Bin Essa earned an MA in business administration and was Chairman of the Kuwait Graduates Society before being elected to the National Assembly in 2008.

Sir Adam Roberts is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford, a senior research fellow in Oxford University's Department of Politics and International Relations, and an emeritus fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.

Zaini Abdullah, a medical doctor by profession, is a former separatist activist of the Free Aceh Movement in Indonesia who was elected as the governor of the province of Aceh in the 2012 election for a five-year period from 2012 to 2017. Elected with 56% of the vote, Zaini Abdullah is the second governor directly chosen by the electors of Aceh since the granting of restricted autonomy to the area by the Indonesian government in 2005. His predecessor Irwandi Yusuf, who was elected in 2006 for the period from 2007 to 2012, was the first governor chosen in the province by direct elections.

Henry Tzu-Yow Yang is a Chinese American engineer and educator currently serving as the fifth chancellor of the University of California, Santa Barbara, a post he has held since 1994.

Horace Jackson Brown Jr. was an American author who was best known for his inspirational book, Life's Little Instruction Book, which was a The New York Times Best Seller (1991–1994). Its sequel Life's Little Instruction Book: Volume 2 also made it to the same best seller list in 1993.

Yang Jisheng is a Chinese journalist and author of Tombstone, a comprehensive account of the Great Chinese Famine during the Great Leap Forward. Yang joined the Communist Party in 1964 and graduated from Tsinghua University in 1966. He promptly joined Xinhua News Agency, where he worked until his retirement in 2001. His loyalty to the party was destroyed by the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Although he continued working for the Xinhua News Agency, he spent much of his time researching for Tombstone. As of 2008, he was the deputy editor of the journal Yanhuang Chunqiu in Beijing. Yang Jisheng is also listed as a Fellow of China Media Project, a department under Hong Kong University.

Hwang In-shik is a Korean actor and hapkido teacher. He is known for his work in various Hong Kong martial arts films such as Bruce Lee's Way of the Dragon, Jackie Chan's The Young Master and Angela Mao's Hapkido. He was awarded a 10th degree black belt, the highest rank possible in the art, by the World Hapkido Association.