List of Famous people born on February 20th

Gerhart Eisler was a German politician. Along with his sister Ruth Fischer, he was a very early member of the Austrian German Communist Party (KPDÖ) and then a prominent member of the Communist Party of Germany during the Weimar Republic.

Émile Naoumoff is a Bulgarian pianist and composer. He revealed himself a musical prodigy at age five, taking up study of the piano and adding composition to his studies a year later. At the age of eight, after a fateful meeting in Paris, he became the last disciple of Nadia Boulanger, who referred to him as "the gift of my old age". He studied with her until her death in late 1979. Boulanger gave him the opportunity to work with Clifford Curzon, Igor Markevitch, Robert and Gaby Casadesus, Nikita Magaloff, Jean Françaix, Leonard Bernstein, Soulima Stravinsky, Aram Khachaturian and Yehudi Menuhin. Lord Menuhin conducted the premiere of Naoumoff's first Piano Concerto, with the composer as a soloist when he was ten years old. He pursued studies at the Paris Conservatory with Lélia Gousseau, Pierre Sancan, Geneviève Joy-Dutilleux, as well as at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris with Pierre Dervaux (conducting).

Sachio Otani was a noted Japanese architect.

Mike Leigh is an English film and theatre director, screenwriter and playwright. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), East 15 Acting School and further at the Camberwell School of Art, the Central School of Art and Design and the London School of Film Technique. He began his career as a theatre director and playwright in the mid-1960s, before transitioning to making televised plays and films for BBC Television in the 1970s and '80s. Leigh is known for his lengthy rehearsal and improvisation techniques with actors to build characters and narrative for his films. His purpose is to capture reality and present "emotional, subjective, intuitive, instinctive, vulnerable films." His films and stage plays, according to critic Michael Coveney, "comprise a distinctive, homogenous body of work which stands comparison with anyone's in the British theatre and cinema over the same period."

Robert Jocelyn, Viscount Jocelyn, was a British soldier and Conservative politician.

Admiral Sir Alexander Ludovic Duff was a Royal Navy officer who served as Commander-in-Chief, China Station.