List of Famous people born in January

Joan Daemen is a Belgian cryptographer who co-designed with Vincent Rijmen the Rijndael cipher, which was selected as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) in 2001. More recently, he co-designed the Keccak cryptographic hash, which was selected as the new SHA-3 hash by NIST in October 2012. He has also designed or co-designed the MMB, Square, SHARK, NOEKEON, 3-Way, and BaseKing block ciphers. In 2017 he won the Levchin Prize for Real World Cryptography "for the development of AES and SHA3". He modestly describes his development of encryption algorithms as the creating the bricks which are needed to build the secure foundations online.

Ken Xie is an American billionaire businessman who founded Systems Integration Solutions (SIS), NetScreen, and Fortinet. He is CEO of Fortinet, a cybersecurity firm based in Silicon Valley. Xie was previously the CEO of NetScreen, which was acquired by Juniper Networks for $4 billion in 2004. He built the first ASIC-based firewall/VPN appliance in 1996.

Vitalij Kowaljow is a bass opera singer living in Switzerland. He initially studied piano as a child, but inspired by his parents, who sang in the choir of his Baptist church in Cherkasy, Ukraine, he took advantage of an offer to study choral conducting for the church. While studying at the Moscow Theological Institute, it was suggested that he take up singing. Working as a fireman at the time, a back injury caused him to cease that job, and he spent more time working with the choir. During a concert where the bass soloists were ill, Kowaljow stepped in, and a Swiss woman present at the concert was impressed by his voice, and arranged for him to audition for the Bern Opera in Switzerland. He went on to study at the Bern Conservatory of Music with Elisabeth Glauser, and obtained a Master's degree.

Hartwig Fischer is a German art historian and museum director. Since April 2016, he has been director of the British Museum, the first non-British head of the museum since 1866. From 2012 to 2016, he was director of the Dresden State Art Collections.

Reggie Austin is an American actor. He is best known for his recurring roles on the Notes from the Underbelly as Dr. Greg Wise, The Starter Wife as Devon Marsh, Desperate Housewives as Renee Perry's ex-husband Doug Perry, Pretty Little Liars as Eddie Lamb, and Devious Maids as Reggie Miller.