List of Famous people who died in 1961

Vanessa Bell was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury Group and the sister of Virginia Woolf.

Abisin Abbas, better known by his pseudonym Andjar Asmara, was a dramatist and filmmaker active in the cinema of the Dutch East Indies. Born in Alahan Panjang, West Sumatra, he first worked as a reporter in Batavia. He became a writer for the Padangsche Opera in Padang, where he developed a new, dialogue-centric style, which later spread throughout the region. After returning to Batavia in 1929, he spent over a year as a theatre and film critic. In 1930 he joined the Dardanella touring troupe as a writer. He went to India in an unsuccessful bid to film his stage play Dr Samsi.

Carl Gustav Jung, originally Karl Gustav Jung, was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy and religious studies. Jung worked as a research scientist at the famous Burghölzli hospital, under Eugen Bleuler. During this time, he came to the attention of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. The two men conducted a lengthy correspondence and collaborated, for a while, on a joint vision of human psychology.

Louis Earl Goodman was a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

Marion Davies was an American actress, producer, screenwriter, and philanthropist. Educated in a religious convent, Davies fled the school to pursue a career as a chorus girl. As a teenager, she appeared in several Broadway musicals and one film, Runaway Romany (1917). She soon became a featured performer in the Ziegfeld Follies. While performing in the 1916 Follies, she met newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst and became his mistress. Hearst took over management of Davies' career and promoted her as a motion picture actress.

Patrice Émery Lumumba was a Congolese politician and independence leader who served as the first Prime Minister of the independent Democratic Republic of the Congo from June until September 1960. He played a significant role in the transformation of the Congo from a colony of Belgium into an independent republic. Ideologically an African nationalist and pan-Africanist, he led the Congolese National Movement (MNC) party from 1958 until his assassination.

Zog I, born Ahmet Muhtar Zogolli, taking the surname Zogu in 1922, was the leader of Albania from 1922 to 1939. He first served as the Prime Minister of Albania (1922–1924), then as President (1925–1928), and finally as the country's King (1928–1939).

William Alexander Morgan was a United States citizen who fought in the Cuban Revolution, leading a band of rebels that drove the Cuban army from key positions in the central mountains as part of Second National Front of Escambray, thereby helping to pave the way for Fidel Castro's forces to secure victory. Morgan was one of about two dozen U.S. citizens to fight in the revolution and one of only three foreign nationals to hold the rank of comandante in the rebel forces. He turned against Castro after the revolution when Castro began to show Communist leanings, and was one of the leaders of the CIA supplied Escambray rebellion.

Captain Gurbachan Singh Salaria, PVC was an Indian Army officer and member of a United Nations peacekeeping force. Singh was an alumnus of King George's Royal Indian Military College and the National Defence Academy. He was the first NDA alumnus and is the only UN Peacekeeper to be awarded a Param Vir Chakra (PVC), India's highest wartime military decoration.

Ida Siekmann was a German nurse who became the first known person to die at the Berlin Wall, only nine days after the beginning of its construction.