List of Famous people who died at 81

Wiard Boppo "Bill" Ihnen was an American art director. He was active from 1919 to 1960 and won Academy Awards for Best Art Direction for Wilson (1944) and Blood on the Sun (1945). He was married to Edith Head.

Viktor Sergeevich Safronov was a Soviet astronomer who put forward the low-mass-nebula model of planet formation, a consistent picture of how the planets formed from a disk of gas and dust around the Sun.

Alvah Cecil Bessie was an American novelist, journalist and screenwriter who was blacklisted by the movie studios for being one of the Hollywood Ten who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

André Caquot was a French orientalist, specialized in semitic history and civilisations and professor of Hebrew and Aramaic language at the Collège de France. In 1986, André Caquot was elected president of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. His work particularly focused on the Dead Sea Scrolls, the ugaritic and phoenician sculptures as well as on ancient Ethiopia.

David Salzer Broder, was an American journalist, writing for The Washington Post for over 40 years. He was also an author, television news show pundit, and university lecturer.