List of Famous people born in Groningen, Kingdom of the Netherlands
Arjen Robben
Arjen Robben is a Dutch professional footballer who plays as a winger and captains Eredivisie club Groningen. He is known for his dribbling skills, speed, ball control, and his long-range shots. Robben is regarded as one of the best players of his generation and one of the best wingers in the world in his prime.
Aletta Jacobs
Aletta Henriëtte Jacobs was a Dutch physician and women's suffrage activist. As the first woman officially to attend a Dutch university, she became one of the first female physicians in the Netherlands. In 1882, she founded the world's first birth control clinic and was a leader in both the Dutch and international women's movements. She led campaigns aimed at deregulating prostitution, improving women's working conditions, promoting peace and calling for women's right to vote.
Hanneke Kappen
Hanneke Kappen is a Dutch singer and radio and TV presenter. Kappen started a musical career by singing in a rock band in the late 1970s during the zenith of the Groningen music scene, but became a radio presenter and from 1981 to 1982 had a weekly show that focused on heavy metal music, only the second such show on Dutch radio. She then moved on to television, presenting programs for a number of public broadcasters. She returned to radio in 1999, while continuing to play and record music.
Michiel Vos
Michiel Vos is a Dutch-American journalist, lawyer, jurist and United States-based correspondent. He is married to filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. They met in Amsterdam when Vos was working for the broadcasting station VPRO, as a presenter for special film nights. The couple have two children.
Juninho Bacuna
Juninho Bacuna is a professional footballer who plays as a central midfielder for EFL Championship side Huddersfield Town and the Curaçao national football team.
Pete Hoekstra
Cornelis Pieter "Pete" Hoekstra is a Dutch-American politician who served as the United States Ambassador to the Netherlands from January 10, 2018 to January 17, 2021. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as the U.S. Representative for Michigan's 2nd congressional district from 1993 to 2011.
Abel Tasman
Abel Janszoon Tasman was a Dutch seafarer, explorer, and merchant, best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He was the first known European explorer to reach the islands of Van Diemen's Land, Fiji and New Zealand.
Selma Engel-Wijnberg
Selma Engel-Wijnberg was one of only two Dutch Jewish Holocaust survivors of the Sobibor extermination camp. She escaped during the 1943 uprising, hid in Poland, and survived the war. Engel-Wijnberg immigrated to the United States from Israel with her family in 1957, settling in Branford, Connecticut. She returned to Europe again only to testify against the war criminals of Sobibor. In 2010 she was in the Netherlands to receive the governmental honor of Knight in the Order of Oranje-Nassau.
Leandro Bacuna
Leandro Jones Johan Bacuna is a professional footballer who plays for Championship club Cardiff City as a midfielder and right back. Bacuna was capped 20 times at youth levels for the Netherlands and also represented the Netherlands Antilles at youth level. Bacuna represents the Curaçao national team, the successor side to the Netherlands Antilles, and won the 2017 Caribbean Cup with the side in July 2017.
Bauke Mollema
Bauke Mollema is a Dutch professional cyclist, who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam Trek–Segafredo. He has finished in the top 10 in all three Grand Tours, with stage wins in the 2017 Tour de France and the 2011 Vuelta a España, in which he finished third overall. His best result in the general classification in the Tour de France came in 2013 when he finished in 6th place. He won the Clásica de San Sebastián in 2016 and finished on the podium on three other occasions at the race. In 2019, he achieved the biggest win of his career in the Giro di Lombardia.