List of Famous people who died in 1956

Oskar Leopold Karlweis was an Austrian-American stage and film actor, active internationally.

Walter Evans Edge was an American diplomat and politician. A Republican, he was twice the Governor of New Jersey, from 1917 to 1919 and again from 1944 to 1947, serving as governor during both World War I and World War II. Edge also served as United States Senator representing New Jersey from 1919 to 1929 and as United States Ambassador to France from 1929 to 1933.

William Henry Davis "Alfalfa Bill" Murray was an American educator, lawyer, and politician who became active in Oklahoma before statehood as legal adviser to Governor Douglas H. Johnston of the Chickasaw Nation. Although not American Indian, he was appointed by Johnston as the Chickasaw delegate to the 1905 Convention for the proposed State of Sequoyah. Later he was elected as a delegate to the 1906 constitutional convention for the proposed state of Oklahoma; it was admitted in 1907.

Robin "Bob" Burns was an American musical comedian, who appeared on radio and in movies from 1930 to 1947. Burns played a novelty musical instrument of his own invention, which he called a "bazooka". During World War II, the US Army's handheld anti-tank rocket launcher was nicknamed the "bazooka".

Robert James Hamilton Lambert was an Irish cricketer. A right-handed batsman and a right-arm off spin bowler, he played 51 times for the Ireland cricket team between 1893 and 1930, including 23 first-class matches, captaining them on 13 occasions. He also played first-class cricket for London County and Woodbrook Club and Ground. On his death, the Wisden Cricketer's Almanack described him as the best all-rounder produced by Ireland.

Albert Jan Kluyver ForMemRS was a Dutch microbiologist and biochemist.

Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker FRS FRSE LL.D. Sc.D. was an early 20th-century British mathematician, physicist, and historian of science. Whittaker was a leading mathematical scholar of the early twentieth century who contributed widely to applied mathematics and was renowned for his research in mathematical physics and numerical analysis, including the theory of special functions, along with his contributions to astronomy, celestial mechanics, the history of physics, and digital signal processing. Among the most influential publications in Whittaker’s bibliography, he authored several popular reference works in mathematics, physics, and the history of science, including A Course of Modern Analysis, Analytical Dynamics of Particles and Rigid Bodies, and A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity. Whittaker is also remembered for his role in the relativity priority dispute, as he credited Henri Poincaré and Hendrik Lorentz for developing special relativity in the second volume of his History, a dispute which has lasted several decades, though scientific consensus has remained with Einstein. Whittaker served as the Royal Astronomer of Ireland early in his career, a position he held from 1906 through 1912, before moving on to the chair of mathematics at the University of Edinburgh for the next three decades and, towards the end of his career, received the Copley Medal and was knighted. The School of Mathematics of the University of Edinburgh holds The Whittaker Colloquium, a yearly lecture, in his honour and the Edinburgh Mathematical Society promotes an outstanding young Scottish mathematician once every four years with the Sir Edmund Whittaker Memorial Prize, also given in his honour.

(Chaim) Herman Müntz was a German mathematician, now remembered for the Müntz approximation theorem.

Lewis Madison Terman was an American psychologist and author. He was noted as a pioneer in educational psychology in the early 20th century at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. He is best known for his revision of the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scales and for initiating the longitudinal study of children with high IQs called the Genetic Studies of Genius. He was a prominent eugenicist and was a member of the Human Betterment Foundation. He also served as president of the American Psychological Association. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Terman as the 72nd most cited psychologist of the 20th century, in a tie with G. Stanley Hall.