Here’s a curated list of 100 famous Jewish figures across various fields: musicians, actors, painters, writers, scientists, and inventors. These individuals have made significant contributions to their respective fields and beyond.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-nobel-prize-laureates
Musicians
Leonard Bernstein – Composer and conductor
George Gershwin – Composer
Bob Dylan – Singer-songwriter, Nobel laureate
Barbra Streisand – Singer and actress
Leonard Cohen – Singer-songwriter and poet
Billy Joel – Singer-songwriter
Itzhak Perlman – Violinist
Gustav Mahler – Composer and conductor
Aaron Copland – Composer
Yehudi Menuhin – Violinist and conductor
Art Garfunkel – Singer (Simon & Garfunkel)
Marc Bolan – Musician (T. Rex)
Regina Spektor – Singer-songwriter
David Helfgott – Pianist
Max Bruch – Composer
Matisyahu – Reggae artist
Steven Tyler – Lead singer of Aerosmith
Benny Goodman – Jazz musician
Gene Simmons – Bassist, KISS
Carole King – Singer-songwriter
Actors and Filmmakers
Natalie Portman – Actress
Scarlett Johansson – Actress
Steven Spielberg – Filmmaker
Woody Allen – Filmmaker and actor
Gal Gadot – Actress
Mel Brooks – Comedian and filmmaker
Dustin Hoffman – Actor
Adam Sandler – Actor and comedian
Mila Kunis – Actress
Seth Rogen – Actor and writer
James Franco – Actor and artist
Sarah Silverman – Comedian and actress
Jake Gyllenhaal – Actor
Maggie Gyllenhaal – Actress
Kirk Douglas – Actor
Michael Douglas – Actor
Daniel Radcliffe – Actor (Harry Potter)
Liev Schreiber – Actor
Paul Rudd – Actor
Jonah Hill – Actor and filmmaker
Painters and Visual Artists
Marc Chagall – Painter
Amedeo Modigliani – Painter and sculptor
Camille Pissarro – Impressionist painter
Barnett Newman – Abstract expressionist
Mark Rothko – Abstract painter
Lee Krasner – Abstract expressionist
Louise Nevelson – Sculptor
Man Ray – Photographer and artist
Lucian Freud – Painter
Max Liebermann – Impressionist painter
Eva Hesse – Sculptor
Sonia Delaunay – Abstract artist
Jules Pascin – Expressionist painter
El Lissitzky – Avant-garde artist and architect
Ben Shahn – Painter and muralist
Hans Hofmann – Painter
R.B. Kitaj – Painter
Anni Albers – Textile artist
Amram Ebgi – Painter
Yaacov Agam – Kinetic artist
Writers and Poets
Franz Kafka – Author
Philip Roth – Author
Saul Bellow – Nobel laureate author
Isaac Bashevis Singer – Yiddish writer, Nobel laureate
Sholem Aleichem – Yiddish writer (inspiration for Fiddler on the Roof)
Elie Wiesel – Holocaust survivor and author (Night)
Hannah Arendt – Political theorist and author
Emma Lazarus – Poet ("The New Colossus")
Allen Ginsberg – Beat poet
Amos Oz – Israeli author
David Grossman – Israeli author
Etgar Keret – Israeli author
Yehuda Amichai – Israeli poet
Arthur Miller – Playwright (Death of a Salesman)
Cynthia Ozick – Novelist
Norman Mailer – Novelist
Gertrude Stein – Modernist writer
Judith Kerr – Author (The Tiger Who Came to Tea)
Chaim Potok – Novelist (The Chosen)
Paul Auster – Novelist
Scientists and Thinkers
Albert Einstein – Physicist, Nobel laureate
Jonas Salk – Inventor of the polio vaccine
Sigmund Freud – Father of psychoanalysis
Niels Bohr – Physicist, Nobel laureate
Richard Feynman – Physicist, Nobel laureate
Rosalind Franklin – Chemist who contributed to DNA structure discovery
Rita Levi-Montalcini – Neurobiologist, Nobel laureate
Carl Sagan – Astronomer and science communicator
Henri Bergson – Philosopher, Nobel laureate
Daniel Kahneman – Psychologist, Nobel laureate in economics
Baruch Spinoza – Philosopher
Jacques Derrida – Philosopher
Judah Folkman – Cancer researcher
David Bohm – Physicist and philosopher
Abraham Maslow – Psychologist (Maslow's hierarchy of needs)
Noam Chomsky – Linguist and cognitive scientist
Steven Weinberg – Physicist, Nobel laureate
Leon Lederman – Physicist, Nobel laureate
Selman Waksman – Biochemist, Nobel laureate
Ada Yonath – Crystallographer, Nobel laureate
This list showcases the incredible breadth of contributions from Jewish individuals in the arts, sciences, and humanities.