The 20th century began on January 1, 1901 and ended on December 31, 2000. It was the century that saw two world wars, the Soviet Union rise and fall, the coming of the telephone, sound recording, film and television, airplanes, atomic weapons, genetics and DNA, computers and electronics in general. Science and industrialization spread; medicine became more scientific.  The human population increased more during this century than any previous one.

Significant people

World leaders 
 Africa
 Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Côte d'Ivoire
 Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia
 Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya
 Idi Amin, Uganda
 Nelson Mandela, South Africa
 Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe
 Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt
 Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana
 Julius Nyerere, Tanzania
 Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, Libya
 Cecil Rhodes, South Africa
 Haile Selassie, Ethiopia
 Léopold Sédar Senghor, Senegal
 Americas
 William McKinley, USA
 Theodore Roosevelt, USA
 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, USA
 Harry S. Truman, USA
 Dwight D. Eisenhower, USA
 John F. Kennedy, USA
 Richard Nixon, USA
 Ronald Reagan, USA
 George H. W. Bush, USA
 Bill Clinton, USA
 Wilfrid Laurier, Canada
 William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada
 Pierre Trudeau, Canada
 Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, Argentina
 Fidel Castro, Cuba
 Raúl Castro, Cuba
 Juan Perón, Argentina
 Jorge Rafael Videla, Argentina
 Leopoldo Galtieri, Argentina
 Salvador Allende, Chile
 Augusto Pinochet, Chile
 Emiliano Zápata, Mexico
 Pancho Villa, Mexico
 José María Velasco Ibarra, Ecuador
 León Febres Cordero, Ecuador
 Sixto Durán Ballén, Ecuador
 Asia
 Mao Zedong, People's Republic of China
 Deng Xiaoping, People's Republic of China
 Pol Pot, Cambodia
 Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose
 Mahatma Gandhi, India
 Indira Gandhi, India
 Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh
 Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia
 Jawaharlal Nehru, India
 Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, India
 Emperor Hirohito, Japan
 Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam
 Sun Yat-sen, Republic of China
 Chiang Kai-shek, Republic of China
 Achmad Sukarno, Indonesia
 Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore
 Europe
 Kemal Atatürk, Turkey
 Neville Chamberlain, United Kingdom
 Winston Churchill, United Kingdom
 Margaret Thatcher, United Kingdom
 Charles de Gaulle, France
 Éamon de Valera, Ireland
 Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, Austria-Hungary
 Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany
 Václav Havel, Czech Republic
 Adolf Hitler, Germany
 Helmut Schmidt, Germany
 Helmut Kohl, Germany
 Gerhard Schröder, Germany
 Benito Mussolini, Italy
 Francisco Franco, Spain
 Adolfo Suárez, Spain
 Jozef Pilsudski, Poland
 Josip Broz 'Tito', Yugoslavia
 Milan Kučan, Slovenia
 Slobodan Milošević, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
 Olof Palme, Sweden
 Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania
 Lech Walesa, Poland
 John Paul II, World
 Middle East
Anwar Sadat, Egypt or United Arab Republic
David Ben-Gurion, Israel
Golda Meir, Israel
Menachem Begin, Israel
Hafez el Assad, Syria
Saddam Hussein, Iraq
King Hussein, Jordan
 Russia and Soviet Union
 Tsar Nicholas II
 Vladimir Lenin
 Joseph Stalin
 Leon Trotsky
 Nikita Khrushchev
 Leonid Brezhnev
 Mikhail Gorbachev
 Boris Yeltsin
 Vladimir Putin

Scientists and physicians 
 David Attenborough
 Niels Bohr
 Ernst Chain
 Francis Crick
 Albert Einstein
 Enrico Fermi
 Frederick Banting
 Howard Walter Florey
 Sigmund Freud
 Kurt Gödel
 Werner Karl Heisenberg
 Hans Krebs
 Jacques Monod
 Linus Pauling
 Frederick Sanger
 Erwin Schrödinger
 John von Neumann
 Nikola Tesla
 Alan Turing
 James Watson

Economics and business 
 John Maynard Keynes
 Milton Friedman
 Henry Ford
 Steve Jobs
 David Rockefeller
 Donald Trump
 Bill Gates

Aerospace pioneers 
 Robert H. Goddard
 Wernher Von Braun
 Neil Armstrong
 Yuri Gagarin
 Charles Lindbergh
 Alan Shepard
 Valentina Tereshkova
 Wright Brothers
 John Glenn
 John Young

Military leaders 
 Charles de Gaulle
 Dwight D. Eisenhower
 Douglas Haig
 Douglas MacArthur
 Bernard Montgomery
 George Patton
 Erwin Rommel
 Leon Trotsky
 Mao Zedong
 Georgy Zhukov

Religious figures 
 Grigori Rasputin
 Tobey Maguire
 Pope John XXIII
 Pope John Paul II
 Mother Theresa of Calcutta
 The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso
 The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
 The Rev. Billy Graham
 Mahatma Gandhi

Artists 
 Salvador Dalí
 Marcel Duchamp
 Jacob Epstein
 Wassily Kandinsky
 Henri Matisse
 Joan Miró
 Amedeo Modigliani
 Piet Mondrian
 Henry Moore
 Pablo Picasso
 Jackson Pollock
 Bob Ross
 Andy Warhol

Singers, actors, actresses and bands 
 Aaliyah
 ABBA
 AC/DC
 Aerosmith
 Andy Griffith
 Ava Gardner
 Anthony Hopkins
 Audrey Hepburn
 Akira Kurosawa
 Alfred Hitchcock
 Arnold Schwarzenegger
 Al Pacino
 Bud Spencer
 Barry White
 Bette Davis
 Brigitte Bardot
 Barbra Streisand
 Betty Grable
 Billie Holiday
 Black Sabbath
 Bob Dylan
 Bob Marley
 Bobby Darin
 Bruce Willis
 Burt Reynolds
 Bruce Lee
 Boney M
 Bee Gees
 Beach Boys
 Clark Gable
 Carole Landis
 Charlie Chaplin
 Clint Eastwood
 Chuck Berry
 Chuck Norris
 Cher
 Danny DeVito
 Donna Summer
 Duran Duran
 David Bowie
 Dennis Hopper
 Doris Day
 Dustin Hoffman
 Elizabeth Taylor
 Eric Clapton
 Elvis Presley
 Elton John
 Eddie Murphy
 Frank Sinatra
 George Lucas
 Greta Garbo
 Green Day
 Groucho Marx
 Genesis (band)
 Guns N' Roses
 Gene Hackman
 Gary Cooper
 Grace Kelly
 Heath Ledger
 Harrison Ford
 Humphrey Bogart
 Ingrid Bergman
 Iggy Pop
 Iron Maiden
 Ian McShane
 Yul Brynner
 James Cameron
 Jack Nicholson
 James Dean
 James Brown
 James Stewart
 Janis Joplin
 Jim Morrison
 Jimi Hendrix
 Judas Priest
 John Hurt
 John Travolta
 John Wayne
 Johnny Depp
 Julie Andrews
 Junius Matthews
 Katharine Hepburn
 Kirk Douglas
 Kraftwerk
 Kurt Cobain
 Kiss (band)
 Led Zeppelin
 Lana Turner
 Lauren Bacall
 Leonardo DiCaprio
 Luciano Pavarotti
 Louis Armstrong
 Lucille Ball
 Madonna (entertainer)
 Mae West
 Metallica
 Meryl Streep
 Marlon Brando
 Marilyn Monroe
 Marlene Dietrich
 Mary Pickford
 Michael Jackson
 Michael Dapaah
 Phil Spector
 Pink Floyd
 Prince (musician)
 Public Enemy
 Queen (band)
 Robert De Niro
 Robert Redford
 Roger Moore
 Ray Charles
 Ron Howard
 Steven Spielberg
 Sylvester Stallone
 Sean Connery
 Sophia Loren
 Sigourney Weaver
 Simon & Garfunkel
 Sharon Stone
 Sandra Dee
 Sex Pistols
 Spike Milligan
 Sterling Holloway
 Stevie Wonder
 Tupac Shakur
 Tina Turner
 The Doors
 The Beatles
 The Ramones
 The Rolling Stones
 The Pointer Sisters
 The Velvet Underground
 U2
 Walt Disney
 Will Ferrell

Writers and Poets 
 Albert Camus
 Anton Chekhov
 Jorge Luis Borges
 Samuel Beckett
 Noam Chomsky
 Charles Bukowski
 Cid Corman
 E. E. Cummings
 T. S. Eliot
 Gabriel García Márquez
 Allen Ginsberg
 Alamgir Hashmi
 Seamus Heaney
 Ernest Hemingway
 James Joyce
 Franz Kafka
 Jack Kerouac
 Philip Larkin
 Antonio Machado
 George Orwell
 Wilfred Owen
 Ezra Pound
 Marcel Proust
 Ayn Rand
 Jean-Paul Sartre
 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
 Gary Snyder
 J. R. R. Tolkien
 Virginia Woolf
 W. B. Yeats
 Emma Goldman
 Rabindranath Tagore

Sports figures 
 Ayrton Senna
 Muhammad Ali
 Chris Benoit
 Larry Bird
 Sir Donald Bradman
 Roberto Clemente
 Ty Cobb
 Franz Beckenbauer
 Fausto Coppi
 Wilfredo Gómez
 Wayne Gretzky
 Sir Edmund Hillary
 Magic Johnson
 Michael Jordan
 Martina Navratilova
 Diego Maradona
 René Higuita
 Sir Stanley Matthews
 Christy Mathewson
 Jesse Owens
 Jack Nicklaus
 Pelé
 Jackie Robinson
 Boris Becker
 Babe Ruth
 O. J. Simpson
 Tris Speaker
 Mike Tyson
 Hulk Hogan
 Ted Williams

People widely known for something bad 
 Idi Amin
 Mohamed Atta
 Bonnie and Clyde
 Ted Bundy
 James Burke (gangster)
 Al Capone
 Mark David Chapman
 Leon Czolgosz
 Jeffrey Dahmer
 John Dillinger
 Pablo Escobar
 John Wayne Gacy
 Carlo Gambino
 Ed Gein
 Nathuram Godse
 Joseph Goebbels
 Emma Goldman
 John Gotti
 Heinrich Himmler
 Adolf Hitler
 Tom Horn
 Saddam Hussein
 Jim Jones
 Theodore Kaczynski
 Osama Bin Laden
 Lucky Luciano
 Charles Manson
 Timothy McVeigh
 Benito Mussolini
 Lee Harvey Oswald
 Carl Panzram
 Gavrilo Princip
 Sacco and Vanzetti
 Jack Ruby
 James Earl Ray
 Harold Shipman
 Bugsy Siegel
 O. J. Simpson
 Sirhan Sirhan
 Josef Stalin
 Aileen Wuornos
 Mao Zedong

Years 
Note: movie years before or after the twentieth century are in italics.