List of Famous people who born in 1940

Leila Ahmed is an Egyptian-American scholar of Islam. In 1992 she published her book Women and Gender in Islam, which is regarded as a seminal historical analysis of the position of women in Arab Muslim societies. She became the first professor of women's studies in religion at Harvard Divinity School in 1999, and has held the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Divinity chair since 2003. In 2013, Ahmed received the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion for her analysis of the "veiling" of Muslim women in the United States, in which she described her rejection of her own previous critiques of the veil as sexist in favor of the view that the veil, when voluntarily chosen, is a progressive and feminist act. As such, she now supports Muslim women who advocate for the veil as a symbol of progressivism and feminism, although Ahmed herself does not practice veiling.

Humberto Waldemar Asdrúbal Baeza Fernández, also known as Tito Fernández and El Temucano, is a Chilean singer-songwriter and folklorist. He recorded and released more than 40 albums from the 1970s to the present.

Lucinda Childs is an American postmodern dancer/choreographer and actress. Her compositions are known for their minimalistic movements yet complex transitions. Childs is most famous for being able to turn the slightest movements into an intricate choreographic masterpiece. Her use of patterns, repetition, and dialect has caused her to have a unique style of choreography that is often imitated for its ability to experiment.

Bruce Beresford is an Australian film director who has made more than 30 feature films over a 50-year career. Notable films he has directed include Breaker Morant (1980), Tender Mercies (1983), Crimes of the Heart (1986) and the multiple Academy Award winning Driving Miss Daisy (1989).

Barry Malcolm McCoy is an American physicist, known for his contributions to classical statistical mechanics, integrable models and conformal field theories.

André-Joseph Léonard is a Belgian prelate who served as the Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels and Primate of Belgium after his installation on 27 February 2010. He had previously served as Bishop of Namur from 1991 until 2010 under the name André-Mutien Léonard. Pope Francis accepted his resignation on 1 June 2015.

Bernd Barleben (1 January 1940) is a former German cyclist. He won the silver medal in team pursuit at the 1960 Summer Olympics

Endre Szemerédi is a Hungarian-American mathematician and computer scientist, working in the field of combinatorics and theoretical computer science. He has been the State of New Jersey Professor of computer science at Rutgers University since 1986. He also holds a professor emeritus status at the Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Cornelius Alexander McGillicuddy III, known professionally as Connie Mack III, is an American retired Republican politician. He served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from Florida from 1983 to 1989 and then as a Senator from 1989 to 2001. He also served as chairman of the Senate Republican Conference from 1997 to 2001.