List of Famous people born in Kansas, United States of America

John Sherman "Johnny" Rutherford III, also known as "Lone Star JR", is an American former automobile racing driver. During an Indy Car career that spanned more than three decades, he scored 27 wins and 23 pole positions in 314 starts. He became one of ten drivers to win the Indianapolis 500 at least three times, winning in 1974, 1976, and 1980. He also won the CART championship in 1980.

Lee Rogers Berger is an American-born South African paleoanthropologist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. He is best known for his discovery of the Australopithecus sediba type site, Malapa; his leadership of Rising Star Expedition in the excavation of Homo naledi at Rising Star Cave; and the Taung Bird of Prey Hypothesis.

Marguerite Marsh was an American actress of the silent era. She appeared in 73 films between 1911 and 1923. Early in her career, she was known as Margaret Loveridge.

Diane Joyce Bish is an American organist, composer, conductor, as well as executive producer and host of The Joy of Music television series. As a concert organist, she performs at concerts throughout North America and Europe. Bish also continues to tape episodes for her television series by visiting notable organs throughout the world.

Capt. Ronald Ellwin Evans Jr., USN was an American naval officer and aviator, electrical engineer, aeronautical engineer, and NASA astronaut. As command module pilot on Apollo 17 he was one of the 24 astronauts to have flown to the Moon, and one of 12 people to have flown to the Moon without landing on it.

Arthur Lee Samuel was an American pioneer in the field of computer gaming and artificial intelligence. He popularized the term "machine learning" in 1959. The Samuel Checkers-playing Program was among the world's first successful self-learning programs, and as such a very early demonstration of the fundamental concept of artificial intelligence (AI). He was also a senior member in the TeX community who devoted much time giving personal attention to the needs of users and wrote an early TeX manual in 1983.

Earl Wilbur Sutherland Jr. was an American pharmacologist and biochemist born in Burlingame, Kansas. Sutherland won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1971 "for his discoveries concerning the mechanisms of the action of hormones", especially epinephrine, via second messengers, namely cyclic adenosine monophosphate, or cyclic AMP.

John Griggs Thompson is a mathematician at the University of Florida noted for his work in the field of finite groups. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1970, the Wolf Prize in 1992 and the 2008 Abel Prize.

Vernon Lomax Smith is an American economist and professor of business economics and law at Chapman University. He is formerly a professor of economics and law at George Mason University, and a board member of the Mercatus Center. He was also a founding board member of the Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University.

Daniel L. Fapp, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer, best known as director of photography for West Side Story (1961), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography, and The Great Escape (1963). He also was nominated for Academy Awards for his cinematography for Desire Under the Elms (1958), The Five Pennies (1959), One, Two, Three (1961), The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), Ice Station Zebra (1968) and Marooned (1969).