List of Famous people who born in 1942

Michael Cormac Newell is an English director and producer of motion pictures for film and television. Newell is best known for directing the films Four Weddings and a Funeral, Donnie Brasco, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. He won the BAFTA Award for Best Direction for Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Gérard Dédéyan is a French professor of medieval history at the Paul Valéry University, Montpellier III, a member of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences and associate member of the Collège de France. He studied Classical Armenian with Frédéric-Armand Feydit.

Frank Mills is a Canadian pianist and recording artist, best known for his solo instrumental hit "Music Box Dancer".

Stanley Benjamin Prusiner is an American neurologist and biochemist. He is the director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Prusiner discovered prions, a class of infectious self-reproducing pathogens primarily or solely composed of protein. He received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1994 and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1997 for prion research developed by him and his team of experts beginning in the early 1970s.

Franciscus Jozef Maria (Frans) Wiertz is a prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He was bishop of Roermond from 1993 until 2017.

Ursula Honour Smith married name Oakley is a former English international badminton player.

Vincent Condol Gray is an American politician who served as the seventh Mayor of the District of Columbia from 2011 to 2015. He served for one term, losing his bid for reelection in the Democratic primary to D.C. Council member Muriel Bowser in the 2014 election. Prior to his inauguration as mayor in January 2011, Gray served as Chairman of the Council of the District of Columbia, and as Councilmember for Ward 7. In the 1990s he also served as director of the DC Department of Human Services. In June 2016, he defeated incumbent Yvette Alexander in the Democratic primary for the council seat he previously held in Ward 7.