List of Famous people who died in 1959

Louis Kollros was a Swiss mathematician. From 1909 to 1948 he was a professor ordinarius of geometry at ETH Zurich.

Emil Ketterer was a German track and field athlete who competed in the 1912 Summer Olympics. Later in his life, he became an ardent Nazi and SA-Obergruppenführer. As a medical doctor, he was involved in approval and promotion of euthanasia under the Nazi regime. He was father-in-law of Hanns-Martin Schleyer, SS officer and victim of the Red Army Faction.

Georg Jakob Christof Joos was a German experimental physicist. He wrote Lehrbuch der theoretischen Physik, first published in 1932 and one of the most influential theoretical physics textbooks of the 20th Century.

James Burr V Allred was the 33rd Governor of Texas. He later served, twice, as a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

Bertha Thalheimer was a German left-wing peace activist who became a politician (KPD).

Ernst Emil Alexander Back was a German physicist, born in Freiburg. He attended school in Strasbourg until 1900, and from 1902 until 1906 studied law in Strasbourg, Munich, and Berlin. He then worked in the legal profession in Alsace-Lorraine until 1909, afterwards taking leave to study physics in Tübingen. He retired from the legal profession in 1912, and earned his Ph.D. in 1913. His thesis, titled Zur Prestonschen Regel, was on the subject of what would later be called the Paschen-Back effect, and was named after Back and Friedrich Paschen.

Boris Vian was a French polymath: writer, poet, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor and engineer. Today he is remembered primarily for his novels. Those published under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan were bizarre parodies of criminal fiction, highly controversial at the time of their release due to their unconventional outlook.

Francis Pélissier was a French professional road racing cyclist from Paris. He was the younger brother of Tour de France winner Henri Pélissier, and the older brother of Tour de France stage winner Charles Pélissier. He won several classic cycle races like Paris–Tours, Bordeaux–Paris and Grand Prix Wolber. He also won the French National Road Race Championship three times as well as two stages at the Tour de France.

Vishwambhar Dayalu Tripathi was an Indian lawyer and politician.

Sir William George Maxwell was a British colonial administrator in British Malaya and the Straits Settlements.