List of Famous people who died in 1940

John Rand was an American actor who started his film career in the 1910s, and most notably supported Charles Chaplin in over 20 of his subjects.

Walter Georg Alfred Hasenclever was a German Jewish Expressionist poet and playwright. His works were banned when the Nazis came to power and he went into exile in France. There he was imprisoned as a "foreign enemy". He died in Les Milles near Aix-en-Provence.

Frederick Charles Louis Constantine, Prince and Landgrave of Hesse, was the brother-in-law of the German Emperor Wilhelm II. He was elected King of Finland on 9 October 1918, but renounced the throne on 14 December 1918. During his brief reign he was known in Finnish as Frederik Kaarle, King of Finland.

Paul Julius Gottlieb Nipkow was a German technician and inventor. He invented the Nipkow disk, which laid the foundation of television, since his disk was a fundamental component in the first televisions. Hundreds of stations experimented with television broadcasting using his disk in the 1920s and 1930s, until it was superseded by all-electronic systems in the 1940s.

Paul Hirsch was a German politician and a member of the Social Democratic Party who served as Prime Minister of Prussia from 1918 to 1920.

James Valentine Fairbairn was an Australian aviator and politician. A World War I fighter pilot, he represented the United Australia Party (UAP) in federal parliament and served as Minister for Air and Civil Aviation from 1939 until his death the following year.