List of Famous people who died in 1973

Tarsila de Aguiar do Amaral was a Brazilian painter, draftswoman and translator. She is considered one of the leading Latin American modernist artists, and is regarded as the painter who best achieved Brazilian aspirations for nationalistic expression in a modern style. As a member of the Grupo dos Cinco, she is also considered a major influence in the modern art movement in Brazil, alongside Anita Malfatti, Menotti Del Picchia, Mário de Andrade, and Oswald de Andrade. Tarsila was instrumental in the formation of the aesthetic movement, Antropofagia (1928–1929); she was in fact the one with her celebrated painting, Abaporu, who inspired Oswald de Andrade's famous Manifesto Antropófago.

Elisa Leonida Zamfirescu was a Romanian engineer who was one of the first women to obtain a degree in engineering. She was born in the Romanian town of Galați but qualified in Berlin. During World War I she managed a hospital in Romania.

Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz was a German diplomat. During World War II he served as an attaché for Nazi Germany in occupied Denmark. He tipped off the Danes about the Germans' intended deportation of the Jewish population in 1943 and arranged for their reception in Sweden. Danish resistance groups subsequently rescued 95% of Denmark's Jewish population. Israel has designated Duckwitz as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.

Âşık Veysel was a Turkish ashik and highly regarded poet of the Turkish folk literature. He was born in the Sivrialan village of the Şarkışla district, in the province of Sivas. He was an ashik, poet, songwriter, and a bağlama virtuoso, the prominent representative of the Anatolian ashik tradition in the 20th century. He was blind for most of his lifetime. His songs are usually sad tunes, often dealing with the inevitability of death. However, Veysel used a wide range of themes for his lyrics; based on morals, values, and constant questioning on issues such as love, care, beliefs, and how he saw the world as a blind man.

Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny was a Russian cavalryman, military commander during the Russian Civil War, Polish-Soviet War and World War II, and a close political ally of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar was a Cuban military officer and politician who served as the elected President of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 and as its U.S.-backed dictator from 1952 to 1959, before being overthrown during the Cuban Revolution. Batista initially rose to power as part of the 1933 Revolt of the Sergeants, which overthrew the provisional government of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada. He then appointed himself chief of the armed forces, with the rank of colonel and effectively controlled the five-member "pentarchy" that functioned as the collective head of state. He maintained this control through a string of puppet presidents until 1940, when he was himself elected President of Cuba on a populist platform. He then instated the 1940 Constitution of Cuba and served until 1944. After finishing his term, Batista moved to Florida, returning to Cuba to run for president in 1952. Facing certain electoral defeat, he led a military coup against President Carlos Prío Socarrás that pre-empted the election.

Lidia Andreyevna Ruslanova was one of the greatest and best-loved performers of Russian folk songs.

Taha Hussein was one of the most influential 20th-century Egyptian writers and intellectuals, and a figurehead for the Egyptian Renaissance and the modernist movement in the Middle East and North Africa. His sobriquet was "The Dean of Arabic Literature" . He was nominated for a Nobel prize in literature fourteen times.

Laurence Harvey was a Lithuanian-born British actor and film director. He was born to Lithuanian Jewish parents and emigrated to South Africa at an early age, before later settling in the United Kingdom after World War II. In a career that spanned a quarter of a century, Harvey appeared in stage, film and television productions primarily in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Dean Arnold Corll was an American serial killer who abducted, raped, tortured, and murdered at least 28 teenage boys and young men between 1970 and 1973 in Houston, Texas. He was aided by two teenaged accomplices, David Owen Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley. The crimes, which became known as the Houston Mass Murders, came to light after Henley fatally shot Corll. Upon discovery, it was considered the worst example of serial murder in U.S. history.