List of Famous people who born in 1940

John Patrick Byrne is a Scottish playwright and artist. He wrote The Slab Boys Trilogy, plays which explore working-class life in Scotland, and the TV dramas Tutti Frutti and Your Cheatin' Heart. Byrne is also a painter, printmaker and theatre designer.

Victor B. Miller is an American writer for film and television. He is best known for his screenplay of the original Friday the 13th film, the popularity of which spawned a long series of sequels. Miller was not involved with any of the sequels, though he remains credited for creating the characters of Jason Voorhees, his mother Pamela, and the heroine Alice Hardy.

William James McBride, CBE, better known as Willie John McBride is a former rugby union footballer who played as a lock for Ireland and the British and Irish Lions. He played 63 Tests for Ireland including eleven as captain, and toured with the Lions five times; a record that gave him 17 Lions Test caps. He also captained the most successful ever Lions side, which toured South Africa in 1974.

Manfred Bietak is an Austrian archaeologist. He is professor emeritus of Egyptology at the University of Vienna, working as the Principal investigator for an ERC Advanced Grant Project “The Hyksos Enigma” and Editor in Chief of the Journal “Egypt and the Levant” and of four series of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Oriental and European Archaeology (2016–2020).

John Cornwell FRSL is a British journalist, author, and academic. Since 1990 he has directed the Science and Human Dimension Project at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he is also, since 2009, Founder and Director of the Rustat Conferences. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters in 2011. He was nominated for the PEN/Ackerley Prize for best UK memoir 2007 and shortlisted Specialist Journalist of the Year, British Press Awards 2006. He won the Scientific and Medical Network Book of the Year Award for Hitler's Scientists, 2005; and received the Independent Television Authority-Tablet Award for contributions to religious journalism (1994). In 1982 he won the Gold Dagger Award Non-Fiction (1982) for Earth to Earth. He is best known for his investigative journalism; memoir; and his work in public understanding of science. In addition to his books on the relationship between science, ethics and the humanities, he has written widely on the Catholic Church and the modern papacy.

John Robert Menard Jr. is an American billionaire businessman, and the founder and owner of Menards, a Midwestern chain of home improvement stores. He is a former INDYCAR racing team owner, and the father of former NASCAR Cup Series driver Paul Menard. He is the son of John Robert Menard Sr (1917–1988). As of 11 June 2021, Bloomberg Billionaires Index ranked him the 103rd-richest person in the world with a net worth of US$18.9 billion.