List of Famous people who died at 81

Gordon Spice was a British racing driver who competed in both sports cars and Touring Car racing in the 1960s and 1970s, before starting Spice Engineering with fellow racing driver Ray Bellm in the 1980s.

Ivan Cornelius Dias was an Indian Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He was Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples from 2006 to 2011, Archbishop of Bombay from 1996 to 2006, and before that a papal diplomat in the Balkans, East Asia, and West Africa. He was elevated to the rank of cardinal in 2001.

Badr bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was a long-term deputy commander of the Saudi National Guard and a senior member of the Saudi royal family.

William George Penney, Baron Penney, was an English mathematician and professor of mathematical physics at the Imperial College London and later the rector of Imperial College. He had a leading role in the development of Britain's nuclear programme, a clandestine programme started in 1942 during World War II which produced the first British atomic bomb in 1952.

Homa Nategh was an Iranian historian, Professor of History at University of Tehran. A specialist in the contemporary history of Iran, she resided in Paris, France until her death. She was active during Iran's 1979 revolution. After the revolution she was purged from the University of Tehran and moved to Paris, where she was appointed as professor of the Iranian Studies at the Sorbonne. In Sorbonne she published several articles on Iranian history in Qajar period.

Borys Illich Oliynyk was a Ukrainian poet, translator, and political activist. He served in the Verkhovna Rada from 1992 to 2006 and was chairman of the Ukrainian Culture Fund.

Hans Jürgen Eysenck was a German-born British psychologist who spent his professional career in Great Britain. He is best remembered for his work on intelligence and personality, although he worked on other issues in psychology. At the time of his death, Eysenck was the living psychologist most frequently cited in the peer-reviewed scientific journal literature. A 2019 study found him to be the third most controversial of 55 intelligence researchers.

Miguel Jones Castillo was a Spanish footballer who played as a midfielder for SD Indautxu and Atlético Madrid during the 1950s and 1960s.

Wera Frydtberg (1926–2008) was a German film and television actress. She appeared in I Often Think of Piroschka (1955) Her best known film Wir Wunderkinder won the Golden Globe for the most successful International Picture in 1960 and the Golden Medal at the Moscow International Film Festival.

Frederick Dalberg was an English-born South African opera bass. As an ensemble member of the Leipzig Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Covent Garden and Mannheim National Theatre, he excelled in German romantic operas, especially those by Richard Wagner, but also took part in several premieres of contemporary compositions.