List of Famous people who died in 1940

George Heywood Maunoir Sumner (1853–1940) was originally an English painter, illustrator and craftsman, closely involved with the Arts and Crafts movement and the late-Victorian London art world. In his mid-forties he relocated to Cuckoo Hill, near Fordingbridge in Hampshire, England, and spent the rest of his life investigating and recording the archaeology, geology and folklore of the New Forest and Cranborne Chase regions.

Prince Jean of Orléans, Duke of Guise, was the third son and youngest child of Prince Robert, Duke of Chartres (1840–1910), grandson of Prince Ferdinand Philippe and great-grandson of Louis Philippe I, King of the French. His mother was Françoise of Orléans, daughter of François, Prince of Joinville, and Princess Francisca of Brazil.

Richard Farman (1872–1940) was a British-French aeronautical engineer, aviator, and eldest of the Farman brothers who were pioneers of early aviation. He was better known as Dick Farman using the then popular sobriquet in place of the formal Richard.

Father Frédéric-Vincent Lebbe (雷鳴遠) was a Roman Catholic missionary to China whose advocacy led Pope Pius XI to appoint the first native Chinese bishops. Born in Belgium, he chose to become a Chinese citizen at a time when missionaries, like all Westerners, enjoyed legal privileges in China, including immunity from Chinese law. He was captured by the Chinese Communists in 1940 and died later that year.

William Faversham was an English stage and film actor, manager, and producer.

Ma Junwu 馬君武 was a celebrated scientist and educator in China and first president of Guangxi University.

William V. Mong was an American film actor, screenwriter and director. He appeared in 195 films between 1910 and 1939. His directing (1911-1918) and screenwriting (1911-1922) were mostly for short films.

Wilhelm Dörpfeld was a German architect and archaeologist, a pioneer of stratigraphic excavation and precise graphical documentation of archaeological projects. He is famous for his work on Bronze Age sites around the Mediterranean, such as Tiryns and Hisarlik, where he continued Heinrich Schliemann's excavations. Like Schliemann, Dörpfeld was an advocate of the historical reality of places mentioned in the works of Homer. While the details of his claims regarding locations mentioned in Homer's writings are not considered accurate by later archaeologists, his fundamental idea that they correspond to real places is accepted. Thus, his work greatly contributed to not only scientific techniques and study of these historically significant sites but also a renewed public interest in the culture and the mythology of Ancient Greece.

Pierre Marie was a French neurologist who was a native of Paris.

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish mysticism, Benjamin made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism. He was associated with the Frankfurt School, and also maintained formative friendships with thinkers such as playwright Bertolt Brecht and Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem. He was also related to German political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt through her first marriage to Benjamin's cousin Günther Anders.