As the world marks International Left-Handers Day on August 13, we take a look at some famous left-handed personalities and explore rare facts and scientific findings about people who favor their left hand.
Former President Uhuru Kenyatta is among Kenya’s best-known left-handed public figures. His handedness was noticeable during former US President Barack Obama’s 2015 state visit to Kenya, when the two leaders were photographed signing a visitors’ book with their left hands
In July, Deputy President Kithure Kindiki drew attention when he used his left hand to operate a digital stylus and write on a smart board during the launch of the Kenya Junior Schools ICT Integration Project.
Other Kenyan personalities who are left-handed include Redsan, former journalist Jacque Maribe and Kenyan-Polish fencer Alexandra Ndolo.
Former US Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton are among the best-known examples. Obama was frequently photographed signing documents with his left hand, while Clinton was also known for writing and signing with his left hand.
Other political figures associated with left-handedness include former US President Ronald Reagan, former US President George H.W. Bush, former UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, former UK Prime Minister David Cameron, Prince William, and former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In entertainment, the list includes Paul McCartney, Jimi Hendrix, Justin Bieber, Dolly Parton, Lady Gaga, Eminem, Cardi B, Angelina Jolie, and Oprah Winfrey.
Bieber’s is left-handed but initially learned to play a right-handed guitar, which he struggled with, but later received a left-handed guitar, which he used as he developed his musical skills.
A 2020 meta-analysis led by Marietta Papadatou-Pastou and colleagues examined 200 studies involving 2,396,170 people.
The researchers estimated that about 10.6% of the global population is left-handed, although the figure varied depending on how handedness was measured.
Rare Facts About Left-Handed People
One of the more unusual findings about handedness comes from research carried out before birth.
In a study published in Neuropsychologia in 2005, researchers Peter G. Hepper, Deborah L. Wells and Catherine Lynch from Queen’s University Belfast followed 75 children who had previously been observed sucking their thumbs in the womb.
Of the 15 fetuses observed sucking their left thumb, 10 later became left-handed and five became right-handed. Among the 60 fetuses observed sucking their right thumb, all later became right-handed.
The researchers concluded that prenatal lateralized behavior, such as thumb sucking, was related to handedness later in life, although it was not a perfect predictor.
A 2024 study of more than 350,000 UK Biobank participants found that rare variants of a gene called TUBB4B were 2.7 times more common among left-handed participants.
The gene is involved in the structure of cells, and the finding gave scientists clues about how differences in brain development are linked to handedness.
However, the discovery does not mean scientists have found a single gene that makes someone left-handed. The variants accounted for only about 0.1% of left-handed cases, suggesting that handedness has a much more complicated origin.
Left-handedness is also not exclusive to humans in the broader sense of lateralized behavior.
Scientists have observed side preferences in chimpanzees and other animals. For example, researchers Elizabeth Lonsdorf and William Hopkins found population-level hand preferences among wild chimpanzees during termite-fishing, while other researchers have documented task-specific hand preferences in chimpanzees.
Researchers Nadia Corp and Richard W. Byrne also found strong individual hand preferences among chimpanzees in Tanzania, with the direction of preference differing between males and females in the tasks they studied.
Scientists, however, distinguish these animal hand preferences from human handedness. A 2013 review by Linda Marchant and William McGrew noted that there is considerable evidence of manual lateralization in chimpanzees, but no conclusive evidence of human-style handedness in the strictest sense.
Myths About Lefties That Science Does Not Support
Left-handed people have been associated with being more intelligent, more creative, or naturally better at certain intellectual tasks, but scientific evidence does not support those claims as general rules.
A 2018 review by Marietta Papadatou-Pastou found that when people were classified simply as left- or right-handed based on hand preference, there was no overall difference in cognitive ability between the groups.
The popular belief that left-handers are naturally more creative has also been challenged.
In a 2025 study, Owen Morgan, Siyi Zhao and Daniel Casasanto reviewed more than a century of research and conducted meta-analyses examining handedness and creativity. Their findings did not support the idea that left-handers have a general advantage in creative thinking. In some laboratory tests, right-handers even showed a small advantage.
The study also found that left-handers were not generally overrepresented in professions requiring high levels of creativity, although artists and musicians were among the exceptions.
Another common claim is that left-handed people are simply “right-brained,” which is also an oversimplification.
Brain organization is more complicated, although left-handers are more likely than right-handers to have language functions represented outside the typical left hemisphere.
Historical and medical research has found that language is strongly left-hemisphere dominant in most people, but bilateral language representation is more common among left-handers.
One review reported left-hemisphere language representation in about 60% of left-handers, compared with almost all right-handers, although estimates vary depending on the methods used.
The lives of famous left-handers also show why handedness should not be treated as a measure of ability. Leonardo da Vinci, for example, is well known for writing many of his notes in mirror script, moving from right to left.
The Victoria and Albert Museum notes that Leonardo’s notebooks contain extensive mirror writing and that his left-handedness may have made this writing style easier.
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