1951 deaths

Wilhelm, German Crown Prince, Crown Prince of Prussia (Friedrich Wilhelm Victor August Ernst; 6 May 1882 – 20 July 1951) was the eldest child of the last Kaiser, Wilhelm II, German Emperor, and his consort Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, and thus a great-grandson of Queen Victoria, and distant cousin to many British Royals, such as Queen Elizabeth II. As Emperor Wilhelm's heir, he was the last Crown Prince of the German Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia, until the abolition of the monarchy.
Wilhelm became crown prince at the age of six in 1888, when his grandfather Frederick III died and his father became emperor. He was crown prince for 30 years until the fall of the empire on 9 November 1918. During World War I, he commanded the 5th Army from 1914 to 1916 and was commander of the Army Group German Crown Prince for the remainder of the war. After his return to Germany in 1923, he fought the Weimar Republic and campaigned for the reintroduction of the monarchy in Germany. After his plans to become president had been blocked by his father, Wilhelm supported Adolf Hitler's rise to power, but when Wilhelm realised that Hitler had no intention of restoring the monarchy, their relationship cooled. Wilhelm became head of the House of Hohenzollern on 4 June 1941 following the death of his father and held the position until his own death on 20 July 1951.

René Jean-Marie-Joseph Guénon (15 November 1886 – 7 January 1951), also known as Abdalwahid Yahia (Arabic: عبد الـوٰاحد يحيیٰ; ʿAbd al-Wāḥid Yaḥiā), was a French-Egyptian intellectual who remains an influential figure in the domain of metaphysics, having written on topics ranging from esotericism, "sacred science" and "traditional studies" to symbolism and initiation.
In his writings, he claims to hand down eastern religious traditions and adapt them to western readers "while keeping strictly faithful to their spirit".Initiated into Islamic esotericism from as early as 1910 when he was 24, he mainly wrote and published in French, and his works have been translated into more than twenty languages; he also wrote in Arabic an article for the journal Al Marifah.

Henri Philippe Bénoni Omer Joseph Pétain (24 April 1856 – 23 July 1951), commonly known as Philippe Pétain (, French: [filip petɛ̃]) or Marshal Pétain (French: Maréchal Pétain), was a general who commanded the French Army in World War I and became the head of the collaborationist regime of Vichy France, from 1940 to 1944, during World War II.
Pétain was admitted to the Saint-Cyr Military Academy in 1873 and pursued a career in the military, achieving the rank of colonel by the outbreak of World War I. He led the French Army to victory at the nine-month-long Battle of Verdun, for which he was called "the Lion of Verdun" (French: le lion de Verdun). After the failed Nivelle Offensive and subsequent mutinies, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief and succeeded in restoring control. Pétain remained in command for the rest of the war and emerged as a national hero. During the interwar period he was head of the peacetime French Army, commanded joint Franco-Spanish operations during the Rif War and served twice as a government minister. During this time he was known as le vieux Maréchal ("the Old Marshal").
On 17 June 1940, with the imminent Fall of France and the government desire for an armistice, Prime Minister Paul Reynaud resigned, recommending to President Albert Lebrun that he appoint Pétain in his place, which he did that day, while the government was at Bordeaux. The government then resolved to sign armistice agreements with Germany and Italy. The entire government subsequently moved briefly to Clermont-Ferrand, then to the town of Vichy in central France. It voted to transform the French Third Republic into the French State, better known as Vichy France, an authoritarian puppet regime that was allowed to govern the southeast of France and which collaborated with the Axis powers. After Germany and Italy occupied all of France in November 1942, Pétain's government worked closely with the Nazi German military administration.
After the war, Pétain was tried and convicted for treason. He was originally sentenced to death, but due to his age and World War I service his sentence was commuted to life in prison. His journey from military obscurity, to hero of France during World War I, to collaborationist ruler during World War II, led his successor Charles de Gaulle to declare that Pétain's life was "successively banal, then glorious, then deplorable, but never mediocre".
Pétain, who was 84 years old when he became Prime Minister and later Chief of State, remains both the oldest person to become the head of government and the oldest person to become the head of state of France.

Sidney Michael Dancoff (September 27, 1913 in Philadelphia – August 15, 1951 in Urbana, Illinois) was an American theoretical physicist best known for the Tamm–Dancoff approximation method and for nearly developing a renormalization method for solving quantum electrodynamics (QED).

Nicolás Rolando Gabaldón (February 23, 1927 – June 6, 1951) was an early surfer who is credited by surfing experts with being California's first documented surfer of African-American and Latino descent at a time when many beaches were segregated and opportunities for minorities more limited than today. Despite being an amateur recreational surfer rather than a professional competitive surfer, he is widely considered a role model for his part in the history of surfing and African American history in the areas of Santa Monica and California.Gabaldón was born February 23, 1927, in Los Angeles, California. His mother was Black and his father was Latino. Very little is known of his childhood. He lived most of his life in Santa Monica, California and was one of 50 black students at Santa Monica High School during the 1940s. Gabaldón taught himself how to surf at a 200-foot roped off stretch of demarcated beach which was part of Santa Monica State Beach. This area of beachfront was informally referred to by names such as "Ink Well Beach", "Negro Beach", and other more derogatory names. In 1924, after the forced closure of black owned and operated Bruce's Beach and due to de facto segregation, that portion of beachfront near Bay Street and Ocean Boulevard became the only place in Southern California that racial minorities were freely allowed to use without harassment or violence. The area remains popular with African American Angelenos up through present day.

Raymond Martinez Fernandez (December 17, 1914 – March 8, 1951) and Martha Jule Beck (May 6, 1920 – March 8, 1951) were an American serial killer couple. They were convicted of one murder, are known to have committed two more, and were suspected of having killed up to twenty victims during a spree between 1947 and 1949.
After their arrest and trial for serial murder in 1949, Fernandez and Beck became known as the Lonely Hearts Killers for meeting their unsuspecting victims through personal ads, posted in newspaper lonely hearts columns. A number of films and television shows are based on this case.

François Hussenot (22 March 1912 – 16 May 1951) was a French engineer, credited with the invention of one of the early forms of the flight data recorder.
He attended the École polytechnique from 1930 to 1932. After graduation, he attended two other schools: the Ecole Militaire d'Application de l'Aéronautique in Versailles, where he obtained his pilot license, and the Ecole Supérieure d'Aéronautique (better known as Supaéro), which he graduated in 1935 with a degree in aeronautical engineering.
His career began at the Centre d'Essais de Matériels Aériens (CEMA) of Villacoublay, an aircraft test center, in 1935. In July of that year, he married Yvonne. In 1936, he was sent to Saint-Raphaël, in southern France, to take part in the testing of heavy seaplanes. In 1941, he moved to the Centre d'Essais en Vol de Marignane, where he made his early attempts at constructing a flight data recorder. Unlike modern recorders, Hussenot's early models had the particularity of storing the information not on a magnetic band, but on an eight meter long by 88 mm wide photographic film, scrolling in front of a thin spot of light deviated by a mirror to represent the data. The initials HB stood for Hussenot and Beaudouin, the name of an early associate who helped Hussenot in developing the device during World War II. Those flight recorders were also known as "Hussenographs".
In July 1945, Hussenot was appointed as an engineer at the Brétigny-sur-Orge flight test center (Centre d'Essais en Vol de Brétigny-sur-Orge) as the director of the Methods and Try-Outs service (Service des Méthodes et Essais). In 1946, with Maurice Cambois and Charles Cabaret, he created the Ecole du Personnel Navigant (E.P.N.) school, which later became the EPNER (Ecole du Personnel Navigant d'Essais et de Réception). As of today, the EPNER is one of only six test pilot schools in the world, together with the Empire Test Pilots' School, the United States Air Force Test Pilot School and the United States Naval Test Pilot School, the National Test Pilot School, and the Indian Air Force Test Pilots School.
In 1947 Hussenot founded the SFIM (Société Française des Instruments de Mesure) with his associate Marcel Ramolfo, to market his flight data recorder. The SFIM had a successful story of its own, selling many successful data recording devices, before diversifying. The company is today part of the Safran group.
In 1948, Hussenot became professor at SUPAERO. In the same year, he was appointed Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, and was awarded the Médaille de l'Aéronautique (Medal of Aeronautics) in recognition for his services.
François Hussenot died in 1951, in a plane crash between Marignane and Mont-de-Marsan.

Jacques Cariou (23 September 1870 – 7 October 1951) was a French show jumping champion. Cariou participated at the 1912 Summer Olympics held in Stockholm, where he won a gold medal in the individual jumping, a silver medal in team jumping with the horse Mignon, and a bronze medal in individual three-day eventing with the horse Cocotte.

Reinhold Trautmann (16 January 1883 – 4 October 1951) was a German Slavist. He is best known for his translations of the works of Slavic literature, such as his 1931 translation of the Primary Chronicle into German. He also conducted research of Slavic languages spoken in Germany.

Leopold Andrian, actually Leopold Freiherr Ferdinand von Andrian zu Werburg (May 9, 1875 in Berlin − November 19, 1951 in Fribourg) was an Austrian author, dramatist and diplomat.