List of Famous people who died in 1956

Paul René Colas was a French sports shooter who competed at the 1908, 1912, 1920 and the 1924 Summer Olympics.

Albert Ernest Collins was an Australian politician.

Alice Dryden was an English photographer, historian and writer. She published books and articles about the history of various Midlands counties illustrated with her own photographs, and is also remembered for her work on the history of lace. Her name was Alice Marcon after 1913.

Alfred Charles Kinsey was an American biologist, professor of entomology and zoology, and sexologist who, in 1947, founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, previously known as the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. He is best known for writing Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), also known as the Kinsey Reports, as well as the Kinsey scale. Kinsey's research on human sexuality, foundational to the field of sexology, provoked controversy in the 1940s and 1950s. His work has influenced social and cultural values in the United States as well as internationally.

Louis Félix Thomas Maurin was a French army general who was twice Minister of War in the 1930s. Before and during World War I (1914–18) he was a strong advocate of motorization. In the inter-war period from 1919 to 1939 he advocated a policy of passive defense against the growing German threat. He thought that with all the money that had been spent on the Maginot Line fortifications it would be madness to go on the offensive. He saw little value in tanks as a weapon. He advised against a limited military reaction when Germany reoccupied the Rhineland in March 1936, calling for general mobilization or nothing. He did not consider that the 1936 pact with Russia would help France militarily.

Sir Gerald Ponsonby Lenox-Conyngham FRS FRAS was an Irish surveyor and geodesist. He was the last superintendent of the Great Trigonometrical Survey and began a readership in geodesy at the University of Cambridge.

Henry Stephenson was a British stage and film actor. He portrayed friendly and wise gentlemen in many films of the 1930s and 1940s. Among his roles were Sir Joseph Banks in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and Mr. Brownlow in Oliver Twist (1948).

Heinrich Gottlieb Imig was a German trade unionist and politician.