List of Famous people who born in 1978

Dinaw Mengestu is an Ethiopian-American novelist and writer. In addition to three novels, he has written for Rolling Stone on the war in Darfur, and for Jane Magazine on the conflict in northern Uganda. His writing has also appeared in Harper's, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. He is the Program Director of Written Arts at Bard College. In 2007 the National Book Foundation named him a "5 under 35" honoree. Since his first book was published in 2007, he has received numerous literary awards, and was selected as a MacArthur Fellow in 2012.

Khader Adnan Mohammad Musa is a senior member of the Palestinian Islamist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and a prisoner in Israel. He has been held in prison 10 times under administrative detention, a procedure which allows Israel to detain people for periods of 6 months, each renewable, without the filing of charges or a trial. As of June 15, 2015, Israeli authorities had not laid any formal charges against him, but have repeatedly held him for reasons such as "activities that threaten regional security." A visit by an International Committee of the Red Cross delegation was cancelled after Israel insisted their visit be conducted in their presence, with Khader remaining tied to his bed. He was released on 18 April 2012 after being on hunger strike for 66 days, and rearrested under the same procedure on July 8, 2014. Khader was released in July, 2015.

Jay Penske is an American media and publishing entrepreneur and racecar team owner. He is the Chairman and CEO of Penske Media Corporation, a digital media and publishing company he founded in 2004.

Maëlle Danica Ricker is a Canadian retired snowboarder, who specialised in snowboard cross. She won an Olympic gold medal in the snowboard cross event at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, to become the first Canadian woman to win a gold medal on home soil at the Olympics. She is also the 2013 World Champion and two-time Winter X Games Champion.

René Wolff is an Olympic and world champion track cyclist from Germany.