When it comes to famous people in Rab's history, Saint Marin is one worth mentioning.

He, according to the legend, set out  from the Lopar peninsula towards the Apennine Peninsula as a stonemason in search of work. Fleeing the persecution of Christians, he took refuge on Mount Titan and built a church there, which became a gathering place for other Christians. Thus, at the beginning of the 4th century, San Marino was born, the oldest living republic in the world. Today, the island of Rab and the Republic of San Marino cultivate very close and friendly relations.
 
John the Baptist of Rab was born in the town of Rab around year 1470. He constructed bells and cannons, and although he started working on Rab, he gained world fame after going to Dubrovnik, where he died in 1540. Unfortunately, there is not a single bell of his on the island of Rab.

Markantun de Dominis, a theologian, mathematician, physicist and philosopher, was born in 1560 in the Dominis Palace, one of  many sights of the town of Rab, built at the end of the 15th century. He was the bishop of Senj, and later the archbishop of Split, when he wrote the work De republica ecclesiastica, in which he advocated dialogue between the churches and their unification, representing a threat to ecumenism. His ideas brought him into conflict with the Roman Catholic Church, and he renounced the title of archbishop and went first to Germany and then to England. At Cambridge he became a doctor of theology, as the first Croat to receive a doctorate from an English university. In one of his works, Isaac Newton pays tribute to Dominis for his contribution to the field of optics. After the election of Pope Gregory XV in 1622, Dominis returned to Rome, but soon the pope died and Dominis came under attack from the Inquisition. He died during a trial in the Inquisition prison, in 1624, allegedly of natural causes. He was posthumously convicted as a heretic, and his body was dragged through the streets of Rome, publicly burned, and thrown into the Tiber River along with his written works.