List of Famous people born in Nova Scotia, Canada

Donald Olding Hebb FRS was a Canadian psychologist who was influential in the area of neuropsychology, where he sought to understand how the function of neurons contributed to psychological processes such as learning. He is best known for his theory of Hebbian learning, which he introduced in his classic 1949 work The Organization of Behavior. He has been described as the father of neuropsychology and neural networks. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Hebb as the 19th most cited psychologist of the 20th century. His views on learning described behavior and thought in terms of brain function, explaining cognitive processes in terms of connections between neuron assemblies.

Leslie Feist, better known by her stage name Feist, is a Canadian indie pop singer-songwriter and guitarist, performing both as a solo artist and as a member of the indie rock group Broken Social Scene.

Sir John William Dawson (1820–1899) was a Canadian geologist and university administrator.

Matthew Henry Richey was a Canadian politician in the 19th century.

Willard Sterling Boyle, was a Canadian physicist. He was a pioneer in the field of laser technology and co-inventor of the charge-coupled device. As director of Space Science and Exploratory Studies at Bellcomm he helped select lunar landing sites and provided support for the Apollo space program.

Keith Roberts Porter was a Canadian-American cell biologist. He performed pioneering biology research using electron microscopy of cells, such as work on the 9 + 2 microtubule structure in the axoneme of cilia. Porter also contributed to the development of other experimental methods for cell culture and nuclear transplantation. He also was responsible for naming the endoplasmic reticulum.

Daniel Mannix Petrie was a Canadian film, television, and stage director who worked in Canada, Hollywood, and the United Kingdom; known for directing grounded human dramas often dealing with taboo subject matter. He was one of several Canadian-born expatriate filmmakers, including Norman Jewison and Sidney J. Furie, to find critical and commercial success overseas in the 1960s due to the limited opportunities in the Canadian film industry at the time. He was the patriarch of the Petrie filmmaking family, with four of his children all working in the film industry.

Murray George Ross, was a Canadian sociologist, author, and academic administrator. He was the founding president of Toronto's York University and served in that role from 1959 to 1970.

Clarence Eugene "Hank" Snow was a Canadian-American country music artist. Most popular in the 1950s, he had a career that spanned more than 50 years, he recorded 140 albums and charted more than 85 singles on the Billboard country charts from 1950 until 1980. His number-one hits include the self-penned songs "I'm Moving On", "The Golden Rocket" and "The Rhumba Boogie" and famous versions of "I Don't Hurt Anymore", "Let Me Go, Lover!", "I've Been Everywhere", "Hello Love", as well as other top 10 hits.

Allan Joseph MacEachen, was a Canadian politician who was a frequent Cabinet minister, a senator, and an elder statesman. He was the first deputy prime minister of Canada and served from 1977 to 1979 and 1980 to 1984.