Famous People Who Died In 1964

Ian Fleming was a British writer, naval intelligence officer, and journalist. Fleming is credited with creating one of the most popular characters of all time, James Bond. His James Bond series of novels have sold more than 100 million copies, making them one of the best-selling fictional book series in history. Jamaica’s Ian Fleming International Airport is named after him.

The 31st president of the United States, Herbert Hoover, was sworn into the office in 1929, the year the Great Depression struck the American economy. Earlier, Hoover was a successful mining engineer and had earned a reputation of a humanitarian who fed numerous Europeans during and after WWI. His policies during the depression, though, could not provide relief to people.

One of the most decorated United States Army soldiers of World War I, Alvin York is best remembered for leading an attack on a German machine-gun nest. The son of a poor blacksmith, he started working as a child to contribute to his family income. After joining the army, he became known for his courage and valor.

Rachel Carson was a conservationist, marine biologist, and author. She is credited with authoring an influential book titled Silent Spring, which played a significant role in advancing the global environmental movement. Carson is also remembered for her book, The Sea Around Us, which earned her a U.S. National Book Award. She was posthumously honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Jawaharlal Nehru was one of the central figures of the Indian independence movement along with personalities like Mahatma Gandhi. He became the first prime minister of India and left behind such a legacy that his direct descendants continue to play an important role in Indian politics.

Alma Mahler, remembered as the wife of composer Gustav Mahler and the daughter of landscape painter Emil Schindler, initially studied art but later acquired skills as a pianist. However, Mahler discouraged her from composing after marriage. She later had other affairs and married architect Walter Gropius and author Franz Werfel.

English actor Cedric Hardwicke is mostly remembered for his roles in the plays of Shakespeare and Shaw. Nicknamed Butch and Badger, he was one of the finest character actors of the initial days of talkies. He was also known for his baritone voice and later moved to the US permanently.

Physicist Leó Szilárd, one of the "Martians," or eminent scientists who had migrated from Hungary to the U.S., was the first to initiate a controlled nuclear chain reaction and was closely associated with the Manhattan Project, meant to develop the atomic bomb. He later advocated for responsible use of nuclear powers.

Anna Julia Cooper was an American author, sociologist, educator, Black liberation activist, and speaker. She was one of the most important African-American scholars in US history. In 1924, Anna Julia Cooper earned her PhD from the University of Paris, becoming only the fourth African-American woman to receive a doctoral degree.

Joseph Schildkraut was an Austrian-American actor best known for winning an Academy Award for his performance in the film The Life of Emile Zola. The son of an actor, he began stage training with Max Reinhardt. He began his career as a character actor on the stage, eventually transitioning to films. He was also active on television. 

British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane is remembered for his pioneering use of statistics in biology. A proponent of neo-Darwinism, he was the son of physiologist John Scott Haldane and had begun assisting his father at age 8. He later joined the British Communist Party and also moved to India.

Apart from being a political economist, Karl Polanyi was also a prominent Hungarian political leader. The Great Transformation remains his best-known work. He taught at institutes such as the Columbia University and is known for proposing the idea of a cultural version of economics known as substantivism.

Italian painter and printmaker Giorgio Morandi is best remembered for his remarkable still life paintings of subjects such as vases, boxes, bottles, and flowers. Though he was hugely inspired by the works of Paul Cézanne, his paintings, known for their gentle, subdued tones, do not fit in any specific school of painting.

Remembered as a medical pioneer and a much-loved mentor, Alfred Blalock is especially noted for his work on traumatic and hemorrhagic shock, which saved thousands of lives during WWII. Working with Vivien Thomas and Helen Taussig, he also developed the Blalock-Thomas-Taussig shunt. Designed to treat children with Blue Baby Syndrome, it ushered a revolution in the field of cardiac surgery.

Paulino Alcántara was a Filipino-born Spanish football player who played as a forward for the Catalonia national football team from 1915 and 1926 and for the Spain national team from 1921 to 1923. He also played for the Philippines national team in 1917. In 1917, Paulino Alcántara won a silver medal for the Philippines at the Far Eastern Championship Games.

Born to a tailor in Australia, Orry-Kelly initially studied banking but later sailed to the US to explore his dreams in theater. Starting with painting murals at a US nightclub, he later grew to design costumes for legends such as Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn. He also won 3 Academy Awards.

T. H. White was an English author whose works have influenced other famous writers like Michael Moorcock, J. K. Rowling, Gregory Maguire, Ed McBain, Neil Gaiman, and Helen Macdonald. Rowling has stated that the Harry Potter books were strongly influenced by White's writing. Gaiman admitted that both Harry Potter and his own character Timothy Hunter were inspired by White's characters.

James Franck was a German physicist. Along with fellow physicist Gustav Hertz, he jointly received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1925. He had a prominent academic career and served as the director of the Second Institute for Experimental Physics at the University of Göttingen. He later moved to USA and participated in the Manhattan Project during World War II.

Nella Larsen was an American novelist who also worked as a librarian and nurse. Among her literary work were her novels, Quicksand and Passing; the latter was adapted into a film of the same name in 2021. Larsen's work has gained renewed interest since the 20th century. Today, she is recognized as the most important novelist of the Harlem Renaissance.

The second governor-general and the second prime minister of Pakistan, Khawaja Nazimuddin had a short tenure due to his ineffective handling of the tense situation in his country. Born in Dacca, he had an elite education at Cambridge and was a qualified lawyer. He was also knighted by the British.

Nobel Prize-winning German pathologist and bacteriologist Gerhard Domagk is best remembered for his pathbreaking discovery of Prontosil, the first sulfonamide antibiotic. The Nazis, however, didn’t allow him to accept the Nobel Prize immediately and detained him briefly instead. He had also served as a soldier in World War I.