Five Thais recognised well beyond Thailand are King Chulalongkorn (Rama V), who modernised Siam and abolished slavery; King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX), who reigned for 70 years; Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the first Thai director to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes; Lisa of the girl group Blackpink; and Somluck Kamsing, the boxer who won Thailand's first Olympic gold in 1996. Around them stand a revolutionary who helped end absolute monarchy, the country's first woman prime minister, a prince remembered as the father of Thai medicine, a 19th-century court poet, and the kickboxers and badminton players who made Thai sport world-class. Below, each field gets its own section, with the people who define it.
Chulalongkorn and Bhumibol: the Chakri kings best known abroad
Chulalongkorn (1853–1910), son of King Mongkut, reigned as Rama V from 1868 until his death. His reign turned Siam into a centralised modern state. In 1874 he created a Council of State and a privy council, and the same year he enacted a law under which household slaves born in 1867 were freed when they reached 21. The Slave Abolition Act of 1905 ended slavery in all forms. He also abolished the office of the Front Palace, or second king, in 1885 and replaced it with a Western-style crown prince. His reign saw Siam cede territory to the British and French empires while the kingdom itself stayed independent, the only one in Southeast Asia never colonised by a Western power, partly because Britain and France kept it as a buffer state.
Bhumibol Adulyadej (1927–2016) was, unusually for a Thai king, born abroad: at Cambridge Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where his father was studying. He grew up in Switzerland and became king on 9 June 1946 after the death of his elder brother, King Ananda Mahidol. His reign of 70 years and 126 days is the longest of any Thai monarch and the longest recorded of any independent Asian sovereign. He died at Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok in October 2016.
Pridi Banomyong and Yingluck Shinawatra in politics
Pridi Banomyong (1900–1983) was a lawyer who, in February 1927, met six other Siamese students at a hotel in Paris and founded the group that became the Khana Ratsadon, or People's Party. On 24 June 1932 that group ended absolute monarchy in a bloodless coup, and Pridi drafted two of the country's first constitutions. He helped found the University of Moral and Political Sciences, now Thammasat University, and the Bank of Thailand, and during the Second World War he led the domestic wing of the Free Thai movement against the Japanese alliance. He became prime minister in 1946, but a coup in 1947 cost him power, a counter-coup attempt in 1949 failed, and he spent the rest of his life in exile, dying in Paris. The system his revolution began is described in our guide to the government of Thailand.
Yingluck Shinawatra (born 1967) grew up in Chiang Mai Province, studied public administration at Chiang Mai University and Kentucky State University, and worked as an executive in companies founded by her elder brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, prime minister from 2001 until a military coup in 2006. The Pheu Thai Party, closely tied to Thaksin, nominated her in May 2011, and after that year's election she became Thailand's first woman prime minister, and its youngest in more than 60 years. She held office until 7 May 2014, when a Constitutional Court decision removed her.
Prince Mahidol Adulyadej in medicine and public health
Mahidol Adulyadej (1892–1929), a son of Chulalongkorn, was trained for the military, at Harrow School in England and then at military academies in Potsdam and Berlin. A visit to Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok, then small, crowded and badly equipped, changed his course. He studied public health at the University of Edinburgh and medicine at Harvard, represented the Thai government in its dealings with the Rockefeller Foundation, which was offering money and expertise for Thai medical education, and gave a large part of his own fortune to fund scholarships so that Thai students and lecturers in medicine, nursing and public health could study abroad. He died at 37, but Thais regard him as the father of modern medicine and public health in the country. He was also the father of two kings, Ananda Mahidol and Bhumibol.
Sunthorn Phu, Kukrit Pramoj and Chart Korbjitti in literature
Sunthorn Phu (1786–1855), a court poet of the early Bangkok era, wrote epic poetry that is still popular in Thailand today. His travel poems, the nirat, include Nirat Phukhao Thong, about a journey to the Golden Mount, and Nirat Mueang Klaeng, written on a trip to see his father in Rayong. He began his long verse romance Phra Aphai Mani while in prison and published it in instalments over about twenty years. In 1986, the 200th anniversary of his birth, UNESCO honoured him as a great world poet, and a memorial to him stands in Klaeng district of Rayong Province, his father's home. The Thai language he shaped is covered in our article on the languages spoken in Thailand.
Kukrit Pramoj (1911–1995), born in Sing Buri Province into a minor branch of the Chakri dynasty, founded the newspaper Siam Rath and serialised in it, in the early 1950s, his novel Four Reigns, which follows Phloi, a girl raised at court, through the reigns of Rama V to Rama VIII. With his brother Seni Pramoj he wrote The King of Siam Speaks (1948) in response to Hollywood's portrayal of King Mongkut. He was prime minister in 1975–1976, between two of Seni's terms, and in 1963 he played the prime minister of a fictional Asian country opposite Marlon Brando in The Ugly American. Chart Korbjitti (born 1954, Samut Sakhon) represents the modern novel: The Judgment (1981) was named book of the year by Thailand's Literature Council and won the S.E.A. Write Award, he won it again in 1994 for Wela (Time), and he was named a National Artist in 2004.
Pumpuang Duangjan, Thongchai McIntyre and Lisa in music
Pumpuang Duangjan (1961–1992) was the child of poor farmers, had two years of primary school and cut sugar cane before a touring band heard her at 15. Though she could not read, she memorised her lyrics, and she turned luk thung, Thai country music about rural life, into dance-floor "electronic luk thung". She is still called the Queen of Luk Thung. She died in 1992, aged 30.
Thongchai McIntyre (born 1958 in Bangkok), known as Bird, is the son of a Royal Thai Army medic of Scottish and Mon descent. He has sold more than 25 million albums, and Prik Kee Noo (1991) sold over 3.5 million copies, the best-selling Thai album of the 1990s. He was named a National Artist in 2023.
Lisa (born Pranpriya Manobal in 1997 in Buriram Province, later Lalisa) auditioned for the Korean label YG Entertainment in Thailand at 13 in 2010, was the only one of about 4,000 applicants selected as a trainee, and debuted with Blackpink in August 2016. Her solo single album Lalisa (2021) made her the first female artist to sell 736,000 copies of an album in its first week in South Korea, and "Money" became the first song by a K-pop solo artist to reach one billion Spotify streams.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Tony Jaa on film
Apichatpong Weerasethakul (born 1970) was born in Bangkok to two physicians who worked at a hospital in Khon Kaen in the northeast, and he studied architecture at Khon Kaen University. His slow, dreamlike films have won three major prizes at Cannes: the top award in Un Certain Regard for Blissfully Yours (2002), the Jury Prize for Tropical Malady (2004), and the Palme d'Or for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives in 2010, the first for a Thai film. Syndromes and a Century premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2006 as the first Thai film entered in competition there, and he now also teaches as a professor at Tama Art University in Tokyo.
Tony Jaa (born 1976), known in Thailand as Jaa Phanom, grew up in rural Surin Province and trained in Muay Thai from the age of eight, fighting at temple fairs. After the filmmaker Panna Rittikrai spotted him he worked as a stuntman for 14 years, and his first lead role, in Ong-Bak (2003), made him an international action star and spawned two sequels.
Somluck Kamsing, Ratchanok Intanon, Panipak Wongpattanakit and Buakaw in sport
Somluck Kamsing (born 1973), a former Muay Thai fighter, won the featherweight boxing title at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Thailand's first Olympic gold medal in any sport, beating Ramaz Paliani and Serafim Todorov on the way, and competed at four Olympics in all. Ratchanok Intanon (born 1995) won the badminton World Junior Championships at 14 in 2009, the first of three junior titles in a row, and in 2013, at 18, became the youngest women's singles world champion. Panipak Wongpattanakit (born 1997 in Surat Thani) won taekwondo bronze in Rio in 2016, Thailand's only gold of the Tokyo Games in 2021 in the 49 kg class, and the same title again in Paris in 2024, the only Thai athlete to retain an Olympic championship. In kickboxing, Buakaw Banchamek (born 1982) won Japan's K-1 World MAX tournament in 2004, beating John Wayne Parr and Masato, and in 2006 became the first man to win it twice. Much of the story told here, from Chulalongkorn's reforms to the 1932 revolution and Siriraj Hospital, played out in Bangkok, the capital since 1782.