List of Famous people who died in 1946

John Arthur Johnson, nicknamed the "Galveston Giant", was an American boxer who, at the height of the Jim Crow era, became the first African American world heavyweight boxing champion (1908–1915). Widely regarded as one of the most influential boxers of all time, one of the period's most dominant champions, and as a boxing legend, his 1910 fight against James J. Jeffries was dubbed the "fight of the century". According to filmmaker Ken Burns, "for more than thirteen years, Jack Johnson was the most famous and the most notorious African-American on Earth". Transcending boxing, he became part of the culture and history of racism in the United States.

John Logie Baird FRSE was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer, and innovator, demonstrating the world's first working television system on 26 January 1926. He also invented the first publicly demonstrated colour television system, and the first purely electronic colour television picture tube.

Marcel André Henri Félix Petiot was a French doctor and serial killer. He was convicted of multiple murders after the discovery of the remains of 23 people in the basement of his home in Paris during World War II. He is suspected of the murder of around 60 victims during his lifetime, although the true number remains unknown.

Lionel Royce was an Austrian-American actor of stage and screen, also known during his European career as Leo Reuss. He began his career in theater in Vienna, Austria in 1919, before moving to Berlin in 1925. Being Jewish, his work began to be restricted in the 1930s in Nazi Germany. Fleeing the Nazis he returned to Austria in 1936, where to hide his heritage, he created the persona of Kaspar Brandhofer, a Tyrolian peasant, and became a sensation as a natural actor on the stage in Vienna. When he admitted his ruse, he became blacklisted in Austria, after which he emigrated to the United States in 1937. He had an active film career in the United States, appearing in almost 40 films between 1938 and 1946. While on tour with the USO, he died in Manila in 1946.

Herbert George Wells was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography and autobiography. His work also included two books on recreational war games. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is often called the "father of science fiction", along with Jules Verne and the publisher Hugo Gernsback.

Ananda Mahidol, posthumous reigning title Phra Athamaramathibodin, was the eighth monarch of Siam from the Chakri dynasty as Rama VIII. At the time he was recognised as king by the National Assembly in March 1935, he was a nine-year-old boy living in Switzerland. He returned to Thailand in December 1945, but six months later, in June 1946, he was found shot dead in his bed. Although at first thought to have been an accident, his death was ruled a murder by medical examiners, and three royal pages were later executed following very irregular trials. The mysterious circumstances surrounding his death have been the subject of much controversy. He was the uncle of King Vajiralongkorn.

Ernest Thompson Seton was an author, wildlife artist, founder of the Woodcraft Indians in 1902 and one of the founding pioneers of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) in 1910. Seton also influenced Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of one of the first Scouting organizations. His notable books related to Scouting include The Birch Bark Roll and the Boy Scout Handbook. He is responsible for the appropriation and incorporation of what he believed to be American Indian elements into the traditions of the BSA.

Louis Alexander Slotin was a Canadian physicist and chemist who took part in the Manhattan Project. He was born and raised in the North End of Winnipeg, Manitoba. After earning both his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from the University of Manitoba, Slotin attended King's College London, where he obtained his doctorate in physical chemistry in 1936. Afterwards, he joined the University of Chicago as a research associate to help design a cyclotron. In 1942, he was invited to participate in the Manhattan Project.

Hermann Wilhelm Göring was a German political and military leader and a convicted war criminal. Göring was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, which ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945.

Jack Valentine Woolams (1917–1946) - was the senior experimental test pilot and later chief test pilot at Bell Aircraft during the introduction of the P-39, P-63, P-59, and X-1 aircraft. He set a world record for altitude and was the first person to fly a fighter jet non-stop across the United States.

Wilhelm Bodewin Johann Gustav Keitel was a German field marshal and war criminal during the Nazi era who served as Chief of the Armed Forces High Command – the office given to the commander and highest-ranking officer of the Nazi Germany Armed Forces during World War II. In this capacity, Keitel signed a number of criminal orders and directives that led to a war of unprecedented brutality and criminality.

Amon Leopold Göth was an Austrian SS functionary and war criminal. He served as the commandant of the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp in Płaszów in German-occupied Poland for most of the camp's existence during World War II.

William Claude Dukenfield, better known as W. C. Fields, was an American comedian, actor, juggler, and writer. Fields' comic persona was a misanthropic and hard-drinking egotist, who remained a sympathetic character despite his supposed contempt for children and dogs.

Willi Herold, also known as "the Executioner of Emsland," was a German war criminal. Near the end of World War II in Europe, Herold deserted from the German Army and, posing as a Luftwaffe captain, organized the mass execution of deserters held at a German prison camp. Herold was arrested by British forces and executed for war crimes on 14 November 1946 at Wolfenbüttel prison.

Rondo Hatton was an American journalist and occasional film actor with a minor career playing thuggish bit and extra parts in Hollywood B movies, culminating in his elevation to horror movie star-status with Universal Studios in the last two years of his life, and posthumously as a movie cult icon. He was known for his unique facial features, which were the result of acromegaly, a syndrome caused by a disorder of the pituitary gland.

Masaharu Homma was a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. Homma commanded the Japanese 14th Army, which invaded the Philippines and perpetrated the Bataan Death March. After the war, Homma was convicted of war crimes relating to the actions of troops under his direct command and executed by firing squad on April 3, 1946.

Tengku Amir Hamzah was an Indonesian poet and National Hero of Indonesia. Born into a Malay aristocratic family in the Sultanate of Langkat in North Sumatra, he was educated in both Sumatra and Java. While attending senior high school in Surakarta around 1930, the youth became involved with the nationalist movement and fell in love with a Javanese schoolmate, Ilik Sundari. Even after Amir continued his studies in legal school in Batavia the two remained close, only separating in 1937 when Amir was recalled to Sumatra to marry the sultan's daughter and take on responsibilities of the court. Though unhappy with his marriage, he fulfilled his courtly duties. After Indonesia proclaimed its independence in 1945, he served as the government's representative in Langkat. The following year he was killed in a socialist revolution led by the Communist Party of Indonesia and buried in a mass grave.

Wanrong, of the Gobulo clan of the Manchu Plain White Banner Gobulo clan, was the wife and empress consort of Puyi, the last Emperor of China, sometimes anachronistically called the “Xuantong Empress”, referring to Puyi’s era name. She was titular empress consort of the Qing dynasty from 1922 until her death, and later became the empress consort of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo from 1934 until abolition of the monarchy in 1945. She was posthumously honored with the title Empress Xiaokemin.

Louis Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Bachelier was a French mathematician at the turn of the 20th century. He is credited with being the first person to model the stochastic process now called Brownian motion, as part of his PhD thesis The Theory of Speculation.

Miroslav Filipović, also known as Tomislav Filipović and Tomislav Filipović-Majstorović, was a Bosnian Croat Franciscan friar and Ustashe military chaplain who participated in atrocities during World War II in Yugoslavia. Convicted as a war criminal in a Yugoslav civil court, he was executed by hanging in 1946.