- May 8 Mikhail Bakunin, Russian revolutionary anarchist, born in Pryamukhino, Tver Governorate of the Russian Empire (d. 1876)
- May 9 Adolf von Henselt, German composer, born in Schwabach, Kingdom of Bavaria (d. 1889)
- May 14 Charles Beyer, German-British locomotive engineer (d. 1876)
- May 30 Eugène Charles Catalan, French-Belgian mathematician (worked on continued fractions, descriptive geometry, number theory and combinatorics), born in Bruges, Belgium (d. 1894)
20-29
30-39
40-49
50-59
80-89
Over 90