1940 births

Richard E. Spear (born 1940 in Michigan City, Indiana) is an American art historian and professor who specializes in Italian Baroque painting.

James Nicholas Counter III (1940–2009) was an American labor attorney, who served as the long-standing president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and as chief negotiator for the major studios who squared off against Hollywood's writers during a 100-day strike in 2008. Counter died on November 6, 2009, at the age of sixty-nine. He was survived by a son, Nicholas; a daughter, Samantha, and her husband, producer and screenwriter Alex Kurtzman; and a grandson, Jack.

Edward P. Tryon (September 4, 1940 – December 11, 2019) was an American scientist and a professor emeritus of physics at Hunter College of the City University of New York (CUNY). He was the first physicist to propose that our universe originated as a quantum fluctuation of the vacuum.

Donald Ray Atkinson (February 10, 1940, in Union City, Indiana–January 11, 2008, in Santa Barbara, CA) was an American counseling psychologist and professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He was known for his extensive work in multicultural counseling psychology. He was the director of training for UCSB's Counseling Psychology Program for ten years (1979-1989), and previously as Assistant Dean of the Department of Education there for four years (1975-1979). Atkinson grew up in Baraboo, Wisconsin and graduated from Baraboo High School. He served in the United States Navy for two years. He wrote a book about Baraboo: "Baraboo: A Selective History." He also wrote other books and articles about counseling. He died from pancreatic cancer in Jackson County, Oregon. He retired from the faculty of UCSB in 2002.

Ralph William Braun (December 18, 1940 – February 8, 2013) was the founder and CEO of the Braun Corporation. He is also known as the "Father of the Mobility Movement" at BraunAbility.

David R. Vance (born August 22, 1940, in Logansport, Indiana) is an American Thoroughbred horse racing trainer who has won more than 3,000 races.
Vance has won three training titles at Churchill Downs, three at Keystone Racetrack and two at the now defunct Garden State Park.
One of his best horses was Caressing, winner of the 2000 Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies who was voted the Eclipse Award as American Champion Two-Year-Old Filly.

Gary R. Pfingston (January 2, 1940 – June 23, 2007) was an airman in the United States Air Force who served as the 10th Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force from 1990 to 1994.

Joe Dowell (January 23, 1940 – February 4, 2016) was an American pop singer.

Mark Hampton (born Mark Iredell Hampton Jr., June 1, 1940 – July 23, 1998) was an American interior designer, writer, and illustrator, known primarily for his residential interior design work for clients such as Brooke Astor, Estee Lauder, Mike Wallace, Saul Steinberg, H. John Heinz III, and Lincoln Kirstein, as well as for three U.S. presidents. In 1986, he was inducted into the Interior Design Hall of Fame, and in 2010, Architectural Digest named him one of the world's top 20 designers of all time.

George Edward Alcorn Jr. (born March 22, 1940) is an American physicist, engineer, inventor, and professor. He taught at Howard University and the University of the District of Columbia, and worked primarily for IBM and NASA. He has over 30 inventions and 8 patents resulting in his induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2015.