List of Famous people born in County Kildare, Ireland

General Sir William Francis Patrick Napier KCB was an Irish soldier in the British Army and a military historian.

Lord Edward FitzGerald was an Irish aristocrat who abandoned his prospects as a distinguished veteran of British service in the American War of Independence, and as an Irish Parliamentarian, to embrace the cause of an independent Irish republic. Unable to reconcile with Ireland's Protestant Ascendancy and with the Kingdom's English-appointed administration, he sought inspiration in revolutionary France where, in 1792, he met and befriended Thomas Paine. From 1796 he became a leading proponent within the Society of United Irishmen of a French-assisted insurrection. On the eve of the intended uprising in May 1798 he was fatally wounded in the course of arrest.

Walter Hussey Burgh was an Irish statesman, barrister and judge; he sat in the Irish House of Commons, and was considered to be one of its outstanding orators. He served briefly as Chief Baron of the Exchequer in the last year of his life.

Gormlaith ingen Murchada (960–1030), sometimes spelled Gormflaith, was an Irish queen.

Lieutenant Colonel John Augustus Conolly VC, born in Celbridge, County Kildare, Ireland, was an Irish recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.

General Sir Eric de Burgh, was a British Army officer who became Chief of the General Staff in India.

Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Michael de Robeck, 1st Baronet, was an officer in the Royal Navy. In the early years of the 20th century he served as Admiral of Patrols, commanding four flotillas of destroyers.

Admiral Sir Hastings Reginald Yelverton, was a Royal Navy officer. As a junior officer he took part in a major action against pirates off Candia in June 1826 and was involved in protecting British interests during the Portuguese Civil War during the early 1830s. He saw action in the Crimean War as Captain of one of the two ships that captured a Russian barque beneath the batteries at Ekenäs in Finland in May 1854. Then in July 1873 he took part in the suppression of the Cantonal Revolution in Cartagena. He became First Naval Lord in September 1876 and in that role implemented a series of economies demanded by the Disraeli ministry but was also involved in ordering the small, cheap and thoroughly unsuccessful ironclad Ajax-class battleships.

Dame Kathleen Lonsdale was an Irish pacifist, prison reformer and crystallographer. She proved, in 1929, that the benzene ring is flat by using X-ray diffraction methods to elucidate the structure of hexamethylbenzene. She was the first to use Fourier spectral methods while solving the structure of hexachlorobenzene in 1931. During her career she attained several firsts for female scientists, including being one of the first two women elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1945, first woman tenured professor at University College London, first woman president of the International Union of Crystallography, and first woman president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

Major General Sir George Pomeroy Colley, was a British Army officer who became Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Natal and High Commissioner for South Eastern Africa. Colley was killed in action, at the Battle of Majuba Hill.