List of Famous people who born in 1940

Jean-Paul Goude is a French graphic designer, illustrator, photographer, advertising film director and event designer. He worked as art director at Esquire magazine in New York City during the 1970s, and famously choreographed the 1989 Bicentennial Parade in Paris to mark the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution. In addition, over the last three decades, he has created well-known campaigns and illustrations for brands including Perrier, Citroën, Kodak, Chanel, Kenzo, Shiseido, Cacharel, H&M, Galeries Lafayette.

Vladimir Cosma is a Romanian-born French composer, conductor and violinist.

Kyoko Nakayama is a Japanese politician and a former leader of the Party for Japanese Kokoro. In the past she has been a member of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Sunrise Party of Japan and Japan Restoration Party and is serving her second term as a member of the House of Councillors in the Diet. She was Special Advisor to the Prime Minister for the North Korean abduction issue under Junichiro Koizumi, beginning in 2002. She left the post in 2004 but was reappointed by Shinzō Abe in 2006. She was appointed by Yasuo Fukuda as State Minister in charge of the Population and Gender Equality Issues on August 1, 2008.

Lothar de Maizière is a German Christian Democratic politician. In 1990, he served as the only democratically elected prime minister of the German Democratic Republic, and as such was the last leader of an independent East Germany.

Hassan Khosrowshahi, is an Iranian-Canadian business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He founded Future Shop, a Canadian consumer electronics chain store that was acquired by Best Buy in 2001 for c.$580 million. He currently invests via his family office, Persis Holdings Ltd.

Paulo César de Campos Velho, better known as Paulo César Pereio, is a Brazilian actor.

Nasir Ahmed is an Indian-American electrical engineer and computer scientist. He is Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of New Mexico (UNM). He is best known for inventing the discrete cosine transform (DCT) in the early 1970s. The DCT is the most widely used data compression transformation, the basis for most digital media standards and commonly used in digital signal processing. He also described the discrete sine transform (DST), which is related to the DCT.

Jack Thompson, AM is an Australian actor and one of the major figures of Australian cinema. He was educated at University of Queensland, before embarking on his acting career. In 2002, he was made an honorary member of the Australian Cinematographers Society (ACS). He is best known as a lead actor in several acclaimed Australian films, including such classics as The Club (1980), Sunday Too Far Away (1975), The Man from Snowy River (1982) and Breaker Morant (1980). He won Cannes and AFI acting awards for the latter film. He was the recipient of a Living Legend Award at the 2005 Inside Film Awards.

Indira Jaising is an Indian lawyer who is noted for her legal activism in promoting human right causes. In 2018 she was ranked 20th in the list of 50 Greatest Leaders of the World by Fortune magazine. She also runs an NGO with the name of Lawyers' Collective, the license of which was permanently cancelled by the Home Ministry for violations of Foreign Contribution Regulation Act. The central government of India accused the NGO of using foreign funds in a manner not mentioned in the objectives of the NGO. However, the Bombay High Court has passed the order to de-freeze the domestic accounts of her NGO. However, this is a small relief as the case still continues in the Supreme Court of India.

Mamnoon Hussain is a Pakistani politician and industrialist who served as the 12th President of Pakistan, in office from 2013 to 2018. He was first appointed as Governor of Sindh in June 1999 by President Rafiq Tarar; but was removed from the post a few months later due to the 1999 military coup d'état. Hussain was then nominated for the presidency by the PML-N in July 2013 and was elected through an indirect presidential election. Hussain took over the presidency after an oath administered by the Chief Justice of Pakistan on 9 September 2013. Hussain maintained a low-key profile as President and his role was rarely seen in the nation's politics, although he was involved in a Polio eradication program.