List of Famous people who died in 1940

Martin Beck was a vaudeville theatre owner and manager, and theatrical booking agent, who founded the Orpheum Circuit, and built the Palace and Martin Beck Theatres in New York City's Broadway Theatre District. He was a booking agent for, and became a close personal friend of the prominent magician, Harry Houdini.

Alexander Ferdinand Koenig was a German naturalist and zoologist.

Sir Alexander Ransford Slater was a British colonial administrator, who served as governor of Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast and Jamaica.

Friederich Pius Philipp Furtwängler was a German number theorist.

Heinrich Gustav Johannes Kayser ForMemRS was a German physicist and spectroscopist.

Walter Kurt Wiemken was a Swiss painter.

René Schickele was a German-French writer, essayist and translator.

Yevhen Omelyanovych Petrushevych was a Ukrainian lawyer, politician, and president of the Western Ukrainian National Republic formed after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918.

Captain Napier George Henry Sturt, 3rd Baron Alington was a British peer, the son of Humphrey Sturt, 2nd Baron Alington.

Gao Lingwei ; (1870–1940) was a Chinese politician during the late Qing dynasty and the early Republic of China.