List of Famous people who born in 1956

Robert David Reed is a Hugo Award-winning American science fiction author. He has a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the Nebraska Wesleyan University. Reed is an "extraordinarily prolific" genre short-fiction writer with "Alone" being his 200th professional sale. His work regularly appears in Asimov's, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Sci Fiction. He has also published eleven novels. As of 2010, Reed lived in Lincoln, Nebraska with his wife and daughter.

Rebecca Moesta Anderson is an American writer and the author of several science fiction books.

Gregory David Massialas is an American foil fencer and fencing coach.

Alexander L. Wolf is a Computer Scientist known for his research in software engineering, distributed systems, and computer networking. He is credited, along with his many collaborators, with introducing the modern study of software architecture, content-based publish/subscribe messaging, content-based networking, automated process discovery, and the software deployment lifecycle. Wolf's 1985 Ph.D. dissertation developed language features for expressing a module's import/export specifications and the notion of multiple interfaces for a type, both of which are now common in modern computer programming languages.

Jesús G. "Chuy" García is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for Illinois's 4th district since 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he served on the Cook County Board of Commissioners, Illinois Senate, as well as Chicago City Council before his election to Congress. A candidate for mayor of Chicago in the 2015 election, García finished second in the February 24 general election and forced a head-to-head runoff against the incumbent, Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel won the April 7 runoff.

Timothy D. Rose is an American actor and puppeteer.

Fermín Hontou, also known by his nickname Ombú, was a Uruguayan cartoonist, illustrator, and caricaturist.

Peter Elliott Shumlin is an American politician from Vermont. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 81st Governor of Vermont from 2011 to 2017. He was first elected to the office in 2010, and was reelected to a second term in 2012. In 2014 he received a narrow plurality in his race for reelection, but did not attain the 50% threshold mandated by the Constitution of Vermont. In such cases the Vermont General Assembly elects the winner. The legislature almost always selects the candidate who received a plurality; this held true, and the General Assembly re-elected Shumlin to a third term by a vote of 110–69 in January 2015. In June 2015, Shumlin announced that he would not seek re-election in 2016. He has signed laws on physician-assisted suicide as well as the United States' first genetically modified food labeling requirement during his tenure as governor. He was chair of the Democratic Governors Association during his first two terms.