List of Famous people who died in 1961

Khachatour Koshtoyants was a Soviet Russian physiologist, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Member of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences, Professor at the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Doktor Nauk in Biological Sciences (1935).

Herbert Claiborne Pell Jr. was a United States Representative from New York, U.S. Minister to Portugal, U.S. Minister to Hungary, and a creator and member of the United Nations War Crimes Commission.

Carlo Aldini (1894–1961) was an Italian actor and film producer.

Heinrich Richard Hamann was a German art historian.

Charles Erwin Wilson was an American engineer and businessman who served as United States Secretary of Defense from 1953 to 1957 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Known as "Engine Charlie", he was previously the president and chief executive officer of General Motors. In the wake of the Korean War, he cut the defense budget significantly.

Charlott Daudert was a German film actress.

Friedrich Wilhelm Stein was a German theologian, conductor, musicologist and church musician. He found in an archive in Jena the score of the so-called Jena Symphony, which he published as possibly a work by the young Ludwig van Beethoven. After a long period in Kiel from 1919 to 1933, teaching at the Kiel University and as Generalmusikdirektor, he had a leading position in the Reichsmusikkammer of the Nazis in Berlin.

Paul ten Bruggencate was a German astronomer and astrophysicist.

Noburō Ōfuji was a Japanese film director and animator. One of the most notable auteurs of anime, he worked primarily with cutout and silhouette animation. He also made a number of films in traditional animation, using then-expensive, imported cels, while his earliest work known to have survived is a live-action/animated film. He trained under Jun'ichi Kōuchi before starting his own company. He is known for his employment of washi, especially the coloured and patterned Edo chiyogami, which gives his films a distinctively Japanese appearance. He was one of the first Japanese animators to earn international recognition for his work.