List of Famous people who died in 1955

Sir Francis Henry Dent, CVO was a British railway manager. He was the son of Admiral C.B.C. Dent. He was General Manager of the SE&CR 1911–1920. He was knighted in 1916 and appointed as Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 1920. Sir Francis was also a keen yachtsman, and owned a West Solent One Design yacht.

Major Frank Bernard Halford CBE FRAeS was an English aircraft engine designer. He is best known for the series of de Havilland Gipsy engines, widely used by light aircraft in the 1920s and 30s.

Frederick Fermor-Hesketh, 2nd Baron Hesketh DL, was a British peer and soldier.

Robert Williams Wood was an American physicist and inventor who made pivotal contributions to the field of optics. He pioneered infrared and ultraviolet photography. Wood's patents and theoretical work inform modern understanding of the physics of ultraviolet light, and made possible myriad uses of UV fluorescence which became popular after World War I. He published many articles on spectroscopy, phosphorescence, diffraction, and ultraviolet light.

Gervas Evelyn Pierrepont, 6th Earl Manvers, MC, JP, known as Gervas Pierrepont until 1940, was a British nobleman, soldier, landowner and member of the House of Lords.

Edward William Macleay Grigg, 1st Baron Altrincham, was a British colonial administrator and politician.

Luís Maria da Costa de Freitas Branco was a Portuguese composer, musicologist, and professor of music who played a pre-eminent part in the development of Portuguese music in the first half of the 20th century.

Anna Petrovna Ostroumova-Lebedeva was a Russian and Soviet artist most notable for her watercolor painting. She was also one of the pioneers of the woodcut technique in Russia.

Ivan Šubašić was a Yugoslav politician, best known as the last Ban of Croatia and prime minister of the royalist Yugoslav Government in exile during the Second World War.

Antanas Merkys was the last Prime Minister of independent Lithuania, serving from November 1939 to June 1940. When the Soviet Union presented an ultimatum to Lithuania demanding that it accept a Soviet garrison, President Antanas Smetona fled the country leaving Merkys as acting president. Merkys ostensibly cooperated with the Soviets, and illegally took over the presidency in his own right. After three days, Merkys handed power to Justas Paleckis, who formed the People's Government of Lithuania. When Merkys attempted to flee the country, he was captured and deported to the interior of Russia, where he died in 1955.