List of Famous people named Joan

Joan Sylvia Lyttle Birman is an American mathematician, specializing in low-dimensional topology. She has made contributions to the study of knots, 3-manifolds, mapping class groups of surfaces, geometric group theory, contact structures and dynamical systems. Birman is currently research professor emerita at Barnard College, Columbia University, where she has been since 1973.

Joan Vollmer was the most prominent female member of the early Beat Generation circle. While a student at Barnard College, she became the roommate of Edie Parker. Their apartment became a gathering place for the Beats during the 1940s, where Vollmer was often at the center of marathon, all-night discussions. In 1946, she began a relationship with William S. Burroughs, later becoming his common-law wife. In 1951, Burroughs killed Vollmer in what he first admitted to and shortly thereafter denied as a drunken attempt at playing William Tell.

Joan Taylor was an American television and film actress.

Dame Joan Alston Sutherland, was an Australian dramatic coloratura soprano noted for her contribution to the renaissance of the bel canto repertoire from the late 1950s through to the 1980s.