List of Famous people who born in 1921

Joonas Kokkonen was a Finnish composer. He was one of the most internationally famous Finnish composers of the 20th century after Sibelius; his opera The Last Temptations has received over 500 performances worldwide, and is considered by many to be Finland's most distinguished national opera.

İbrahim Balaban was a Turkish painter.

Bolesław Pylak was a Polish prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He was one of the oldest Roman Catholic bishops in Poland. Pylak was born in Łopiennik Górny, Poland and was ordained a priest on 29 June 1948 from Archdiocese of Lublin. Pylak was appointed Auxiliary bishop of the Lublin diocese as well as Titular bishop of Midica on 14 March 1966, and ordained a bishop on 29 May 1966. Pylak was appointed bishop of the Diocese of Lublin on 27 June 1975 and served in that capacity until his retirement on 14 June 1997.

Victor Almon McKusick was an American internist and medical geneticist, and Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. He was a proponent of the mapping of the human genome due to its use for studying congenital diseases. He is well known for his studies of the Amish. He was the original author and, until his death, remained chief editor of Mendelian Inheritance in Man (MIM) and its online counterpart Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM). He is widely known as the "father of medical genetics".

Lars Johan Wictor Gyllensten was a Swedish author and physician, and a member of the Swedish Academy, which has the aim of furthering the "purity, vigour and majesty" of the Swedish language and selects the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature each year.

Robert Ghormley Parr was an American theoretical chemist who was a Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Herbert Giersch was a German economist. He was one of the initial members of the German Council of Economic Experts in 1964, serving on the council until 1970, and also was president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy 1969–1989. Giersch was considered the most influential German economist during the chancellorships of Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, and Helmut Kohl.

Bruno Touschek was an Austrian physicist, a survivor of the Holocaust, and initiator of research on electron-positron colliders.