Legitimacy (law) - Notable People

Notable People

Notable people born outside of marriage have included:

• Confucius (ca. 551–479 BCE) – Chinese thinker and social philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period.
• St. Vladimir the Great – Grand Prince of Kiev (980–1015) who converted Kievan Rus' (predecessor state of modern Russia, Ukraine and Belarus) to Christianity in 988. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches celebrate the feast day of St. Vladimir on 15 July.
• William the Conqueror (1028–87)

• King Joao I of Portugal (1358–1433)
• Leone Battista Alberti (1404–72)
• Antoine, bastard of Burgundy (1421–1504)
• Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) – Italian painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, writer.
• Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536) – Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, theologian.
• Ferdinand Columbus (1488–1539)

• Queen Elizabeth I of England (1533–1603) – declared illegitimate by the Second Succession Act, considered as such by both the Church of England and Roman Catholic Church
• Jean le Rond d'Alembert (1717–83)
• Alexander Hamilton (1755–1804) – a founding father of the American republic, military officer, political philosopher, and economist. The first Secretary of the Treasury for the United States and creator of its financial system.
• James Smithson (1764 – 27 June 1829) – British mineralogist and chemist whose bequest helped found the U.S. national museum, the Smithsonian Institution.
• Ivan Pnin – in an 1802 petition to Tsar Alexander I, famously deplored the status of illegitimate children in the Russian Empire.

• Vasily Zhukovsky
• Howard Staunton
• Alexander Herzen
• Jenny Lind
• Alexandre Dumas, fils (1824 – 95), author of The Lady of the Camellias and The Illegitimate Son
• Edwin Booth
• Booker T. Washington
• Helena Modjeska
• Sir Henry Morton Stanley
• Sarah Bernhardt

• Ramsay MacDonald
• Edward Gordon Craig
• Jack London
• Sergio Osmeña
• Guillaume Apollinaire
• Colonel T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") – British author and co-organizer of the Arab revolt against the Turks in World War I.
• Stefan Banach
• Willy Brandt
• Sir Alec Guinness – actor

• Eva Perón
• Charles Manson – American criminal who led the murderous "Manson Family"
• David Warner – actor
• Larry Ellison – American business magnate, co-founder and chief executive officer of Oracle Corporation, a major enterprise software company. He was born to an unwed 19-year-old mother. In 2011 he was the world's fifth-richest person, with a personal wealth of $39.5 billion.
• Paul Nurse – Nobel laureate
• Steve Jobs – co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple Inc., born to an unmarried graduate student who placed him for adoption with Paul and Clara Jobs. His first daughter Lisa Brennan-Jobs was also born out of wedlock, to Jobs and his former girlfriend.