List of Famous people who died in 2001

Begum Qudsia Aizaz Rasul was the only Muslim woman in the Constituent Assembly of India that drafted the Constitution of India.

Barend Willem Biesheuvel was a Dutch politician of the defunct Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP) now the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) party and jurist who served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 6 July 1971 until 11 May 1973.

Edwin A. Finckel was an American jazz performer and arranger and a composer of songs and classical music.

James Hill was an American film producer and screenwriter active from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s. He was born in Indianapolis, Indiana and came to Hollywood as a writer, working on films and televisions shows for Warner Brothers Pictures and Columbia Broadcasting System. He was eventually teamed with film producer Harold Hecht and actor Burt Lancaster when the pair produced His Majesty O'Keefe for their own film production company, Norma Productions. The movie was filmed in 1952 in the Fiji Islands, but only released in 1954.

Elisabeth Lennartz (1902–2001) was a German stage actress. Although she worked primarily in the theatre, she also appeared in several films. Lennartz was an associate of Marlene Dietrich in 1920s Berlin.

Seth Benardete was an American classicist and philosopher, long a member of the faculties of New York University and The New School. In addition to teaching positions at Harvard, Brandeis, St. John's College, Annapolis and NYU, Benardete was a fellow for the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung in Munich.

Leonard Mandel was the Lee DuBridge Professor Emeritus of Physics and Optics at the University of Rochester when he died at the age of 73 at his home in Pittsford, New York. He contributed immensely to theoretical and experimental optics and is widely considered one of the founding fathers of the field of quantum optics. With Emil Wolf he published the highly regarded book Optical Coherence and Quantum Optics.