1956 deaths

Paul Léautaud (18 January 1872 – 22 February 1956) was a French writer and theater critic for Mercure de France, signing his often caustic reviews with the pseudonym Maurice Boissard.

Guido Cantelli (Italian: [ˈɡwi.do kanˈtɛl.li]; 27 April 1920 – 24 November 1956) was an Italian orchestral conductor. Toscanini elected him his "spiritual heir" since the beginnings of his career. He was named Musical Director of La Scala, Milan in November 1956, but his promising career was cut short only one week later by his death at the age of 36 in the 1956 Paris DC-6 crash in France on route to the United States.

Isaac Rosenfeld (March 10, 1918 - July 14, 1956) was an American writer who became a prominent member of New York intellectual circles. Rosenfeld wrote one novel (Passage from Home, 1946), which, according to literary critic Marck Shechner, "helped fashion a uniquely American voice by marrying the incisiveness of Mark Twain to the Russian melancholy of Dostoevsky," and many articles for The Nation, Partisan Review, and The New Republic. Some of those articles were posthumously published in a volume titled An Age of Enormity, and his short stories were later published as Alpha and Omega.

François d'Astier de La Vigerie (7 March 1886 – 9 October 1956) was a French military leader during two World Wars.His family were from Vivarais, and were ennobled in 1829 under the French Restoration. His father, le baron Raoul d'Astier de La Vigerie, was an artillery officer, and his mother, Jeanne, née Masson-Bachasson de Montalivet, was the granddaughter of Camille, comte de Montalivet, who had been Minister of the Interior under Louis-Philippe I of France. François d’Astier was brought up partly in Paris and partly at the Château de Rançay at Niherne.

George Alfred Leon Sarton (; 31 August 1884 – 22 March 1956) was a Belgian-American chemist and historian. He is considered the founder of the discipline of the history of science as an independent field of study. His most influential works were the Introduction to the History of Science, which consists of three volumes and 4,296 pages and the journal Isis. Sarton ultimately aimed to achieve an integrated philosophy of science that provided a connection between the sciences and the humanities, which he referred to as "the new humanism".

Lucien Paul Victor Febvre (, French: [lysjɛ̃ pɔl viktɔʁ fɛvʁ]; 22 July 1878 – 11 September 1956) was a French historian best known for the role he played in establishing the Annales School of history. He was the initial editor of the Encyclopédie française together with Anatole de Monzie.

Félix Édouard Justin Émile Borel (French: [bɔʁɛl]; 7 January 1871 – 3 February 1956) was a French mathematician and politician. As a mathematician, he was known for his founding work in the areas of measure theory and probability.

Gustave Charpentier (French: [ɡystav ʃaʁpɑ̃tje]; 25 June 1860 – 18 February 1956) was a French composer, best known for his opera Louise.