List of Famous people who died in 1966

Helen Kane was an American singer and actress. Her signature song was "I Wanna Be Loved by You" (1928), featured in the 1928 stage musical Good Boy. The song was written for Good Boy by songwriters Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. Kane's voice and appearance were a source for Fleischer Studios animator Grim Natwick when creating Betty Boop. Kane attempted to sue the studio for claims of stealing her signature "boop-a-doop" style. However, the judge decided that there was not sufficient proof of this, thus dismissing the case.

Joseph Frank Keaton, known professionally as Buster Keaton, was an American actor, comedian, film director, producer, screenwriter, and stunt performer. He is best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression that earned him the nickname "The Great Stone Face". Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton's "extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929" when he "worked without interruption" on a series of films that make him "the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies". His career declined afterward with a loss of artistic independence when he signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, his wife divorced him, and he descended into alcoholism. He recovered in the 1940s, remarried, and revived his career as an honored comic performer for the rest of his life, earning an Academy Honorary Award in 1959.

George Charles de Hevesy was a Hungarian radiochemist and Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate, recognized in 1943 for his key role in the development of radioactive tracers to study chemical processes such as in the metabolism of animals. He also co-discovered the element hafnium.

Francesco "Frank" Lentini was a Sicilian-American sideshow performer who toured with numerous circuses. Born with a parasitic twin, Lentini had three legs.

Nandalal Bose was one of the pioneers of modern Indian art and a key figure of Contextual Modernism.

Albert Günther Göring was a German engineer and businessman and the younger brother of Hermann Göring. In contrast to his brother, Albert was opposed to Nazism, and he helped Jews and others who were persecuted in Nazi Germany. He was shunned in post-war Germany because of his family name, and he died without any public recognition and received very little attention for his humanitarian efforts until decades after his death.

Dietrich Hugo Hermann von Choltitz was a German general. Popularly known as the Saviour of Paris, he served in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany during World War II, as well as serving in the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic, and the Royal Saxon Army during World War I.

Nicholas John Piantanida was an American amateur parachute jumper who reached 123,500 feet with his Strato Jump II balloon on February 2, 1966, flying a crewed balloon higher than anyone before, a record that stood until Felix Baumgartner's flight on October 14, 2012.

Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934), the novel Brideshead Revisited (1945), and the Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour (1952–1961). He is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century.

Homi Jehangir Bhabha was an Indian nuclear physicist, founding director, and professor of physics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). Colloquially known as "father of the Indian nuclear programme", Bhabha was also the founding director of the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (AEET) which is now named the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in his honour. TIFR and AEET were the cornerstone of Indian development of nuclear weapons which Bhabha also supervised as director.