List of Famous people who died in 1942

Janusz Korczak, the pen name of Henryk Goldszmit, was a Polish Jewish educator, children's author and pedagogue known as Pan Doktor or Stary Doktor. After spending many years working as a principal of an orphanage in Warsaw, he refused sanctuary repeatedly and stayed with his orphans when the entire population of the institution was sent from the Ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp by the Nazis, during the Grossaktion Warschau of 1942.

John Barrymore was an American actor on stage, screen and radio. A member of the Drew and Barrymore theatrical families, he initially tried to avoid the stage, and briefly attempted a career as an artist, but appeared on stage together with his father Maurice in 1900, and then his sister Ethel the following year. He began his career in 1903 and first gained attention as a stage actor in light comedy, then high drama, culminating in productions of Justice (1916), Richard III (1920) and Hamlet (1922); his portrayal of Hamlet led to him being called the "greatest living American tragedian".

Yuri Vasilievich Kondratyuk was a Soviet engineer and mathematician. He was a pioneer of astronautics and spaceflight, a theoretician and a visionary who, in the early 20th century, developed the first known lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR), a key concept for landing and return spaceflight from Earth to the Moon. The LOR was later used for the plotting of the first actual human spaceflight to the Moon. Many other aspects of spaceflight and space exploration are covered in his works.

Valdemar Poulsen was a Danish engineer who made significant contributions to early radio technology. He developed a magnetic wire recorder called the telegraphone in 1898 and the first continuous wave radio transmitter, the Poulsen arc transmitter, in 1903, which was used in some of the first broadcasting stations until the early 1920s.

Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, was the seventh child and third son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He served as the Governor General of Canada, the tenth since Canadian Confederation and the only British prince to do so. In 1910 he was appointed Grand Prior of the Order of St John and held this position until 1939.

Matvey Kuzmich Kuzmin was a Russian peasant who was killed in World War II. He was posthumously the oldest person to be named a Hero of the Soviet Union on May 8, 1965 based on his age at death.

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was an American sculptor, art patron and collector, and founder in 1931 of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. She was a prominent social figure and hostess, who was born into the wealthy Vanderbilt family and married into the Whitney family.

Helmuth Günther Guddat Hübener, was the youngest opponent of the Third Reich to be sentenced to death by the Special People's Court (Volksgerichtshof) and executed.

Anton Drexler was a German far-right political leader and agitator for the Völkisch movement in the 1920s. He founded the pan-German and anti-Semitic German Workers' Party (DAP), the antecedent of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). Drexler mentored his successor in the NSDAP, Adolf Hitler, during his early years in politics.

Robert Robinson Taylor was an American architect and educator. Taylor was the first African-American student enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the first accredited African-American architect when he graduated in 1892. He was an early and influential member of the Tuskegee Institute faculty.