1941 births

Richard Llewellyn Brooks (born August 20, 1941) is a retired American football player and coach. He was the head coach at the University of Oregon from 1977 to 1994, the National Football League (NFL)'s St. Louis Rams from 1995 to 1996, and the University of Kentucky from 2003 to 2009.
Brooks' 1994 Oregon team won the Pac-10 title and played in the 1995 Rose Bowl. For his efforts that season, he won a number of national coaching awards. The University of Oregon named the field at Autzen Stadium Rich Brooks Field in honor of his 18 seasons as coach for the Ducks.

Donna Edna Shalala ( shə-LAY-lə; born February 14, 1941) is an American politician and academic who served in the Carter and Clinton administrations, as well as in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2019 to 2021. Shalala is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which she was awarded in 2008, and, on August 16, 2023, assumed the role of Interim President of The New School, a university in New York City.
Shalala earned a bachelor's degree from Western College for Women in 1962 and served in the Peace Corps. In 1970, she earned a PhD from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. Shalala later worked as a professor at Baruch College and at Teachers College, Columbia University and was appointed as assistant secretary for policy development and research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development by President Jimmy Carter. Shalala became the president of Hunter College in 1980, serving until 1988 when she became chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
From 1993 to 2001, Shalala served as the 18th United States Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Bill Clinton. Shalala served as HHS secretary for all eight years of the Clinton administration, becoming the nation's longest-serving HHS secretary. She is the first Lebanese-American to serve in a Cabinet position. Shalala served as president of the University of Miami from 2001 through 2015, and also taught at the university during that period. She was president of the Clinton Foundation from 2015 to 2017.
A member of the Democratic Party, Shalala was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 27th congressional district in 2018. She served one term in the House before being defeated in the 2020 election by María Elvira Salazar in an upset.

Walter Francis Sweeney (April 18, 1941 – February 2, 2013) was an American professional football guard who played in the American Football League (AFL) and the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Syracuse Orange and was named to the school's all-century team. He also played in the North–South Bowl and the College All-Star Game. A first-round draft pick of the San Diego Chargers in 1963, Sweeney helped them win the AFL championship.

Cesare Salvadori (22 September 1941 – 8 August 2021) was an Italian sabre fencer. He won a gold and two silver medals with the Italian team at the 1964, 1968, and 1972 Olympics. His best individual achievement at the Summer Games was ninth place in 1964.

Jerold Alan Edmondson (Chinese name: 艾杰瑞 Aì Jiéruì, September 30, 1941 – August 27, 2023) was an American linguist. His work spans four subdisciplines: historical and comparative linguistics, East Asian linguistics, field linguistics, and phonetics. He was a leading specialist in Tai–Kadai languages of East Asia, especially the Kam–Sui and Kra branches.

Richard Joseph Jensen (born October 24, 1941) is an American historian and Wikipedia editor. He was a professor of history at the University of Illinois, Chicago, from 1973 to 1996. He has worked on American political, social, military, and economic history as well as historiography and quantitative and computer methods. His work focuses on Midwestern electoral history. He authored The Winning of the Midwest and Historian's Guide to Statistics.

Lise Skjåk Bræk (born Marie Elisabeth Bræk, 7 November 1941) is a Norwegian textile artist, known for her works within ceremonial apparel, uniforms, costumes, rugs, and other textiles. She is a resident of Trondheim.
She is the daughter of former minister of industry in Norway, Ola Skjåk Bræk, and Ingeborg Bræk, a noted activist for humanitarian causes.

Eugene Schoulgin (born April 19, 1941, in Oslo) is a Norwegian writer and government scholar.
He is the son of the painter Alexander Schultz, and grew up in Norway, Italy and France. He attended high school in Oslo (1960). He has studied Classical Archaeology and Art History at the Universities of Uppsala and Stockholm. He was married in Stockholm in 1964 and has three children.
He lives in Oslo, Norway.

Nils Kristian Heyerdahl (born 11 April 1941) is a Norwegian historian of ideas, theatre director and non-fiction writer. He was theatre director of Radioteatret in the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation from 1991 to 2011, and is President of the Norwegian Academy from 2011.

Even Hovdhaugen (June 21, 1941 – October 16, 2018) was a Norwegian linguist. He became a professor of general linguistics at the University of Oslo in 1974. He was an expert in Polynesian languages.
Hovdhaugen was born in Oslo, the son of the politician Einar Hovdhaugen. He received his master's degree in classical philology and comparative Indo-European linguistics in 1966. He carried out field research in Hungary, Turkey, the USSR, Mongolia, Peru, Chile, Samoa, Tokelau, and the Solomon Islands. He produced extensive research and published textbooks for both university and high school use. He authored grammars of Samoan and Tokelauan.In 1995 he was a guest professor at the University of Copenhagen, and from 1978 to 1980 he served as the first editor of the Nordic Journal of Linguistics. He held several key positions within university administration and research, including dean of the Faculty of Arts in Oslo. He headed the Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture from 1986 to 1991. In 1992 he received the Fridtjof Nansen Award of Excellence and the Norwegian Research Council for Science and the Humanities (NAVF) Prize for Excellence.
He resided in Bærum. He died on October 16, 2018.