List of Famous people who died in 1991

Constance Mary Hart, Baroness Hart of South Lanark,, known as Judith Hart, was a British Labour Party politician. She served as a government minister during the 1960s and 1970s before entering the House of Lords in 1988.

Gerome Ragni was an American actor, singer and songwriter, best known as co-writer of the 1967 musical Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical.

Herbert Blankenhorn was a German diplomat. From 1929 he was member of the Foreign Office, and from 1938 was a member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). At the time, he was counsellor in the German legation in Bern, Switzerland. Philippe Mottu had been encouraged by Canon de Bavier, the Procurator of the Abbey of St. Maurice in the Vatican, to meet him as he was in reality an anti-Nazi. Mottu says, 'At the moment when the Third Reich was triumphant on the battlefield, he explained to me why, according to his conviction, Germany was going to lose the war. It was my first contact with one of the men who took part in the German resistance.' [Philippe Mottu, ‘Caux is the place!’, Caux Doc, 1997, p. 10-11] In 1943 he launched the economy department of the German legation in Bern and was Head of the Foreign Office. After 1945 he became one of the most influential German professional diplomats. He joined the CDU in 1946 and served as the West German ambassador to Italy, France(1963-1965) and the United Kingdom (1965–1970). He was the son of officer Karl Blankenhorn (1878-1963).

Walter Maurice Elsasser was a German-born American physicist, a developer of the presently accepted dynamo theory as an explanation of the Earth's magnetism. He proposed that this magnetic field resulted from electric currents induced in the fluid outer core of the Earth. He revealed the history of the Earth's magnetic field by the study of the magnetic orientation of minerals in rocks. He was also the first to suggest that the wave-like nature of matter might be investigated by electron scattering experiments using crystalline solids.

Sumiyuki Kotani was a Japanese martial artist. He was a member of the 1932 Japanese Olympic wrestling team. He was one of the highest ranked judoka, and was awarded a 10th dan in April 1984 by the Kodokan. He was for a long time the oldest 10th dan, until Ichiro Abe was awarded the rank age of 83 years. Kotani studied at the Tokyo College of Education and studied judo directly under Jigoro Kano. As a young man he was known to take on any challenges. Kotani was very active in promoting judo throughout the world and was the director of the international division at the Kodokan for many years. He was also a professor at Tokai University. He was the Kodokan's top representative and vice president of the All Japan Judo Federation. He died on October 19, 1991.

Alice Friedmann, known as Litzi Friedmann, was an Austrian Communist who was the first wife of Kim Philby, a member of the Cambridge Five. Records identify her as the Soviet agent with the code name Mary.