List of Famous people who died in 1981

Field Marshal Sir Claude John Eyre Auchinleck, was a British Army commander during the Second World War. He was a career soldier who spent much of his military career in India, where he rose to become Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army by early 1941. In July 1941 he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Middle East Theatre, but after initial successes, the war in North Africa turned against the British, and he was relieved of the post in 1942 during the crucial Alamein campaign.

Erich Paul Hubert Correns was a German chemist and president of the National Front of the German Democratic Republic.

Mairi Lambert Gooden Chisholm of Chisholm, MM, OStJ, known as Mairi Chisholm, was a Scottish nurse and ambulance driver in the First World War. She, together with her friend Elsie Knocker, won numerous medals for bravery and for saving the lives of thousands of soldiers on the Western Front in Belgium. Dubbed "The Madonnas of Pervyse" by the press the two were among the most photographed women of the war.

Ilya Bolotowsky was a leading early 20th-century Russian-American painter in abstract styles in New York City. His work, a search for philosophical order through visual expression, embraced cubism and geometric abstraction and was influenced by Dutch painter Piet Mondrian.