1991 deaths

León Ávalos y Vez (24 January 1906 – 1991) was a Mexican mechanical engineer who served as the founding director-general of the Monterrey Institute of Technology (ITESM, 1943–1946) and as director-general of the National School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering of the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN, 1943).Ávalos y Vez was born in Atlixco, Puebla, on 24 January 1906 into a family composed by Ignacio Ávalos and Amalia Vez. He received a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the National Polytechnic Institute and a master's degree in the same discipline from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1929).

Lafayette Green Pool (July 23, 1919 – May 30, 1991) was an American tank-crew and tank-platoon commander in World War II and is widely recognized as the US tank ace of aces, credited with 12 confirmed tank kills and 258 total armored vehicle and self-propelled gun kills, over 1,000 German soldiers killed and 250 more taken as prisoners of war, accomplished in only 81 days of action from June 27 to September 19, 1944, using three different Shermans. He received many medals and decorations, including the Distinguished Service Cross, the Legion of Merit, the Silver Star, the Purple Heart, the Belgian fourragère, and the French Legion of Honour.

Lars L'Abée-Lund (22 April 1910 – 17 May 1991) was a Norwegian police officer and judge. He was born in Aker. From 1945 to 1950 L'Abée-Lund was in charge of the department responsible for the Legal purge in Norway after World War II. He served as judge at Eidsivating Court of Appeal from 1968 to 1980. He was decorated Commander of the Swedish Order of Vasa, and Knight, First Class of the Danish Order of the Dannebrog.

Leif Holbæk-Hanssen (27 March 1917 – 10 April 1991) was a Norwegian professor of economics and anthroposophist.

Erik Willoch (19 December 1922 – 5 August 1991) was a Norwegian jurist and civil servant.
Born in Oslo as a brother of Kåre Willoch, he graduated as cand.jur. in 1948. He worked at the University of Oslo from 1950 to 1956, and then in the Office of the Attorney General of Norway from 1957. He was the director of the Norwegian Civil Aviation Administration from 1964 to 1989.

Lieutenant General Odd Bull (28 June 1907 – 8 September 1991) was a career officer in the Royal Norwegian Air Force who rose to the position of Chief of Air Staff. He is probably best known outside Norway for his role as Chief of Staff of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) between 1963 and 1970, a period which coincided with the Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbours. He wrote a memoir of his experiences during this time, which was published as War and Peace in the Middle East: The Experiences and Views of a U.N. Observer.

Randi Nilie Nordby Johnson (May 15, 1926 – March 28, 1991) was a Norwegian actress. She was engaged with the Oslo New Theater for many years. As an actress, she used her maiden name as her stage name.

Øyvind Vennerød (22 July 1919 – 27 September 1991) was a Norwegian film director and producer. He was born in Kristiania, and was the father of Petter Vennerød.

Lydia Cabrera (May 20, 1899, in Havana, Cuba – September 19, 1991, in Miami, Florida) was a Cuban independent ethnographer, writer, and literary activist. She was an authority on Santería and other Afro-Cuban religions. During her lifetime she published over one hundred books; little of her work is available in English. Her most important book is El Monte (Spanish: "The Wilderness"), which was the first major ethnographic study of Afro-Cuban traditions, herbalism and religion. First published in 1954, the book became a "textbook" for those who practice Lukumi (orisha religion originating from the Yoruba and neighboring ethnic groups) and Palo Monte (a central African faith) both religions reaching the Caribbean through enslaved Africans. Her papers and research materials were donated to the Cuban Heritage Collection - the largest repository of materials on or about Cuba located outside of Cuba - forming part of the library of the University of Miami. A section in Guillermo Cabrera Infante's book Tres Tigres Tristes is written under Lydia Cabrera's name, in a comical rendition of her literary voice. She was one of the first writers to recognize and sensitively publish on the richness of Afro-Cuban culture and religion. She made valuable contributions in the areas of literature, anthropology, art, ethnomusicology, and ethnology.
In El Monte, Cabrera fully described the major Afro-Cuban religions: Regla de Ocha (commonly known as Santeria) and Ifá, which are both derived from traditional Yoruba religion; and Palo Monte, which originated in Central Africa.
Both the literary and anthropological perspectives in Cabrera's work assume that she wrote about mainly oral, practical religions with only an “embryonic” written tradition. She is credited by literary critics for having transformed Afro-Cuban oral narratives into literature, which is, written works of art, while anthropologists rely on her accounts of oral information collected during interviews with santeros, babalawos, and paleros, and on her descriptions of religious ceremonies.
There is a dialectical relationship between Afro-Cuban religious writing and Cabrera's work; she used a religious writing tradition that has now internalized her own ethnography.

Sir Ewan Forbes, 11th Baronet, (6 September 1912 – 12 September 1991), was a Scottish nobleman, general practitioner and farmer. Forbes was a trans man; he was christened Elizabeth Forbes-Sempill and officially registered as the youngest daughter of John, Lord Sempill. After an uncomfortable upbringing, he began presenting as a man in the 1930s, following a course of medical treatments in Germany. He formally re-registered his birth as male in 1952, changing his name to Ewan, and was married a month later.
In 1965, he stood to inherit the baronetcy of his elder brother William, Lord Sempill, together with a large estate. This inheritance was challenged by his cousin, who argued that the re-registration was invalid; under this interpretation, Forbes would legally be considered a woman, and thus unable to inherit the baronetcy. The legal position was unclear, and it took three years before a ruling by the Court of Session, which held him to be intersex, finally led to the Home Secretary recognising his claim to the title. The case was heard in great secrecy, with the effect that it was unable to be considered in other judgments on the legal recognition of gender variance, but has become more widely known since his death in 1991.