List of Famous people born in May

Ronald Raphael Coifman is the Phillips Professor of Mathematics at Yale University. Coifman earned a doctorate from the University of Geneva in 1965, supervised by Jovan Karamata.

Terry Zwigoff is an American filmmaker whose work often deals with misfits, antiheroes, and themes of alienation. He first garnered attention for his work in documentary filmmaking with Louie Bluie (1985) and Crumb (1994). After Crumb, Zwigoff moved on to write and direct fiction feature films, including the Academy Award nominated Ghost World (2001) and Bad Santa (2003).

Felix Otto is a German mathematician.

Peter von Matt is a Swiss philologist and author.

Theda Skocpol is an American sociologist and political scientist, who is currently the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University. An influential figure in both disciplines, Skocpol is best known as an advocate of the historical-institutional and comparative approaches, as well as her "state autonomy theory". She has written widely for both popular and academic audiences. She has been President of the American Political Science Association and the Social Science History Association.

Tiziano Scarpa is an Italian novelist, playwright and poet.

Erika Lechner is an Italian luger who competed during the late 1960s and early 1970s. At the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, she originally finished third in the women's singles event behind Ortrun Enderlein and Anna-Maria Müller, but was awarded the gold medal upon the disqualifications of Enderlein, Müller, and Angela Knösel when the East Germans were discovered to have their runners being illegally heated.