List of Famous people who died in 1971

Philo Taylor Farnsworth was an American inventor and television pioneer. He made many crucial contributions to the early development of all-electronic television. He is best known for his 1927 invention of the first fully functional all-electronic image pickup device, the image dissector, as well as the first fully functional and complete all-electronic television system. Farnsworth developed a television system complete with receiver and camera—which he produced commercially through the Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation from 1938 to 1951, in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Freddie Steinmark was an American college football player, whose diagnosis of bone cancer and subsequent leg amputation during his junior year with the University of Texas Longhorns provided an inspiration for the team's national championship that year. His life has since been the subject of a number of inspirational books and a movie.

Aleksandr Trifonovich Tvardovsky was a Soviet poet and writer and chief editor of Novy Mir literary magazine from 1950 to 1954 and 1958 to 1970. His name has also been rendered in English as Aleksandr Trifonovich Tvardovski, Aleksandr Tvardovski, and Alexander Tvardovsky.

Georg von Rauch was a member of the left-radical Blues-Scene in West-Berlin at the end of the 1960s during the German student movement.

Joseph Siffert was a Swiss racing driver.

Naoya Shiga was a Japanese novelist and short story writer active during the Taishō and Shōwa periods of Japan.

Yaşar Nezihe was considered as one of the female poets in the Ottoman Period. She is known as the writer of the first Turkish poem for International Workers' Day on 1 May.

Charles Frederick Hughes was an American football player, a wide receiver in the National Football League from 1967 to 1971. He is, to date, the only NFL player to die on the field during a game.

Juan Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán was a Guatemalan military officer and politician who served as the 25th President of Guatemala. He was Minister of National Defense from 1944 to 1951, and the second democratically elected President of Guatemala, from 1951 to 1954. He was a major figure in the ten-year Guatemalan Revolution, which represented some of the few years of representative democracy in Guatemalan history. The landmark program of agrarian reform Árbenz enacted as president was very influential across Latin America.

Wasfi Tal was a Jordanian politician, statesman and general. He served as Prime Minister of Jordan for three separate terms, 1962–63, 1965–67 and 1970 until his assassination in 1971.