List of Famous people who died in 1940

Robert Stevenson Horne, 1st Viscount Horne of Slamannan, was a Scottish businessman, advocate and Unionist politician. He served under David Lloyd George as Minister of Labour between 1919 and 1920, as President of the Board of Trade between 1920 and 1921 and as Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1921 and 1922. In 1937 he was ennobled as Viscount Horne of Slamannan.

Dov Hoz was a leader of the Labor Zionism movement, one of the founders of the Haganah organization, and a pioneer of Israeli aviation.

Ernesto Pascal (1865–1940) was an Italian mathematician.

Jacques Goudstikker was a Jewish Dutch art dealer who fled the Netherlands when it was invaded by Nazi Germany during World War II, leaving three furnished properties and an extensive and significant art collection including over 1200 paintings, many of which had been previously catalogued as "Old Masters". The entire collection, which had been surveyed by Hermann Goering himself, was subsequently looted by the Nazis. Between the two World Wars, Jacques Goudstikker had been the most important Dutch dealer of Old Master paintings, according to Peter C. Sutton, executive director and CEO of the Bruce Museum of Arts and Science. Despite efforts of Goudstikker's widow after the war to regain possession of the collection, it was not until after her death that the Dutch government finally restituted 202 paintings to the Goudstikker family in 2006. To finance efforts to reclaim more of the stolen art, a large portion of them were sold at auction in 2007 for almost $10 million.

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bonch-Bruevich, sometimes spelled Bonch-Bruyevich, was a Russian engineer, scientist, and professor. Generally considered the leading authority on radio in Russia in the first decades of the 20th century, he greatly influenced the pre-radar development of radio-location in that nation.

Otto Rudolf Salvisberg was a Swiss architect.

Ruth Harriet Louise was an American professional photographer, the first woman photographer active in Hollywood; she ran Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's portrait studio from 1925 to 1930.