List of Famous people who died at 71

Robert William Holley was an American biochemist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 for describing the structure of alanine transfer RNA, linking DNA and protein synthesis.

Edmund Lincoln Anderson was an American comedian and actor. To a generation of early radio and television comedy he was known as "Rochester".

Charles Gwathmey was an American architect. He was a principal at Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, as well as one of the five architects identified as The New York Five in 1969. Gwathmey was perhaps best known for the 1992 renovation of Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

Nikolai Sergeevich Bakhvalov was a Soviet and Russian mathematician.

Robert Ardrey was an American playwright, screenwriter and science writer perhaps best known for The Territorial Imperative (1966). After a Broadway and Hollywood career, he returned to his academic training in anthropology and the behavioral sciences in the 1950s.

Louis Mesenkop was an American sound engineer. He won two Academy Awards for Best Special Effects and was nominated for another in the same category. Mesenkop was part of the production team who received an Academy Honorary Award at the 11th Academy Awards for their efforts on the Paramount film Spawn of the North.