List of Famous people who died in 1969

Shivaramakrishnan Pancharatnam (1934–1969) was an Indian physicist who did significant work in the field of optics. He is noted for his discovery of a type of geometric phase sometimes known as Pancharatnam phase for polarized beams passing through crystals. He was born in Calcutta in West Bengal, India in 1934. He was elected a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences at the early age of 25. He was a reader at the Department of studies in Physics, University of Mysore from 1961-1964. From 1964 until his death in 1969 at the age of 35 he was a Research Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford, working in association with George William Series. His publications for this period were mainly concerned with the theory of effects found in experiments on optical pumping, e.g. double refraction in a gas due to spin alignment. Professor Series has written an introduction to the life and work of Pancharatnam. He also prepared, for the Proceedings of the Royal Society, the last three papers from notes left by Pancharatnam.

Egil Hjorth-Jenssen was a Norwegian actor and theatre director, playwright, children's writer and translator.

Armand Henning Carlsen was a Norwegian speed skater who competed in the 1928 Winter Olympics.

Cecil Frank Powell, FRS was a British physicist, and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and for the resulting discovery of the pion (pi-meson), a subatomic particle.

Lejzor Szmuel Czyż, best known as Leonard Chess, was a Polish-born American record company executive and the co-founder of Chess Records. He was influential in the development of electric blues, Chicago blues, and rock and roll.

Cecil Edwin Webber was a British television writer and playwright. He is best remembered for his contribution to the creation of the famous science-fiction series Doctor Who while working as a staff writer for the BBC in the early 1960s. Although none of his scripts were eventually used in the programme—producer Rex Tucker felt he was not capable of 'writing down' to the level required—he participated in many crucial early development meetings, and co-wrote the first format document for the series with Donald Wilson and Sydney Newman. His draft script for the proposed first ever episode formed the basis of the broadcast first episode eventually written by Anthony Coburn. Webber received a co-writer's credit on internal BBC documentation for the episode, although not on screen.

Leopold Biberti (1894–1969) was a Swiss actor. Born as French, he got the Swiss citizens rights in 1920.

Sir Lewis Thomas Casson MC was an English actor and theatre director, and the husband of actress Dame Sybil Thorndike.

Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov, popularly known as Klim Voroshilov, was a prominent Soviet military officer and politician during the Stalin era. He was one of the original five Marshals of the Soviet Union, the highest military rank of the Soviet Union, and served as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the nominal Soviet head of state, from 1953 to 1960.