1946 deaths

Cornelius Cooper "Corny" Johnson (August 28, 1913 – February 15, 1946) was an American athlete in the high jump. Born in Los Angeles in 1913, Johnson first competed in organized track and field events at Berendo Junior High School. He achieved greater athletic success as a student at Los Angeles High School, competing in the sprint and in the high jump. Before going to the Olympics as a junior, he won the CIF California State Meet in 1932. He had been second the year before. In 2016, the 1936 Olympic journey of the eighteen Black American athletes, including Johnson, was documented in the film Olympic Pride, American Prejudice.

Lillian Knight (née Unold) (March 23, 1883 – May 16, 1946) was an American western star and silent film actress. An obituary called her "the First Film Queen of the West."

Werner Heinrich Gustav Kolhörster (28 December 1887 – 5 August 1946) was a German physicist and a pioneer of research into cosmic rays.
Kolhörster was born in Schwiebus (Świebodzin), Brandenburg Province of Prussia. While attending the University of Halle, he studied physics under Friedrich Ernst Dorn.Repeating the cosmic ray experiments of Victor Hess, in 1913-14 Kolhörster ascended by balloon to an altitude of 9 km, where he confirmed Hess' result that the ionization rate from cosmic rays was greater at that altitude than at sea level. This was evidence that the source for these ionizing rays came from above the Earth's atmosphere.Kolhörster continued his physics studies at the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt in Berlin, beginning in 1914. During World War I he made measurements of atmospheric electricity in Turkey. Following the war he became a teacher. He joined the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt in 1922.In 1928–29, Walter Bothe and Kolhörster used the Geiger-Muller detector to demonstrate that cosmic rays were actually charged particles. The ability of these particles to penetrate the Earth's atmosphere meant that they must be highly energetic.In 1930, Kolhörster started the first institute for the study of cosmic rays in Potsdam, with financial assistance from the Prussian Academy of Sciences. He became director of the Institut für Hohenstrahlungsforschung in Berlin-Dahlem in 1935, where he was appointed an ordinary professor.Kolhörster was killed in a car crash in Munich. The crater Kolhörster on the Moon is named in his memory.

Pierre Louis Marie Bertran de Balanda (28 September 1887 – 28 March 1946) was a French horse rider who competed in the 1928 Summer Olympics.
He was born in Toulouse and died in Marseille.
In 1928, he and his horse Papillon won the silver medal in the individual jumping competition. They also finished fourth as part of the French jumping team in the team jumping competition.

Robert de Besange, SJ (15 March 1878 – 10 September 1946), also known as Jacquinot de Besange and in China as Rao Jia-ju (Chinese: 饶家驹), was a French Jesuit who set up a successful model of safety zones that saved over half-a-million Chinese people during the Second Sino-Japanese War.Jacquinot de Besange's family originates from aristocratic lineages in Lorraine, in northeastern France. He arrived in China in 1913 as a missionary and served the Portuguese congregation at the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Hongkou. He also served as a chaplain to the Shanghai Volunteer Corps. He had lost his right arm in an explosion while conducting chemistry experiments in his youth, and was known as the "one-armed priest."
De Besange acted as president of the China International Famine Relief Commission during the 1932 Battle of Shanghai, where his relief work for refugees, including negotiating a four-hour truce between the Chinese and the Japanese armies to allow the evacuation of civilians and casualties from the war zone, made him a household name in Shanghai.
The "de Besange model" began with the Shanghai Safety Zone (南市难民区, "Nanshi Refugee Zone"), or "Jacquinot de Besange Safe Zone", in 1937 during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It was a demilitarised zone for Chinese civilians located in a part of the Old City of Shanghai that was adjacent to the Shanghai French Concession. The demilitarised zone was respected by both sides of the war and by the concession authorities. It was administered by an international committee composed of representatives of the American, British, and French communities and policed by the Chinese police. The zone was credited with saving the lives of thousands of Chinese residents between 1937 and 1940, when it was abolished after de Besange left Shanghai. Aside from setting up the Safety Zone, de Besange was also responsible for arranging for refugee camps to be set up in the Tu-seh-weh Orphanage and the Fuh Tan College to shelter refugees fleeing the war zone.Following the example of de Besange in Shanghai, the foreigners in Nanjing created the Nanking Safety Zone (南京安全区), managed by the International Committee for the Nanjing Safety Zone and led by the German businessman John Rabe. The same model also inspired the Hankou Safety Zone, the Zhangzhou Safety Zone, and the Shenzhen Safety Zone.
His work is acknowledged in the Protocols and Commentaries to the 1949 Geneva Convention. A film of his life and work, Jacquinot: A Forgotten Hero directed by Krzysztof Zanussi, was featured in the 2009 Shanghai International Film Festival.On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the events, a memorial stone was unveiled in the Shanghai City God Temple in December 2017.

Maurice Langaskens (born 1884 in Ghent — died 1946 in Schaerbeek) was a Belgian painter. His work was initially of the Art Nouveau style. Langaskens was prisoner of war when he painted his best known work, In Memorium: Burial of a Prisoner of War at the Gottingem Camp.

Hermann Geyer (7 July 1882 – 10 April 1946) was a German general during World War II who commanded the IX Army Corps. He was a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross of Nazi Germany. Geyer retired in 1943 and committed suicide in 1946.

Ewald von Demandowsky (21 October 1906 – 7 October 1946) was a German film producer who held the office of a Nazi German Reichsfilmdramaturg and was head of production at the Tobis Film company in the Third Reich.

Erich Bessel-Hagen (12 September 1898 in Charlottenburg – 29 March 1946 in Bonn) was a German mathematician and a historian of mathematics.Erich Paul Werner Bessel-Hagen was born in 1898 in Charlottenburg, a suburb, later a district in Berlin. He studied at the University of Berlin where in 1920 he obtained a Ph.D. in mathematics under the direction of Constantin Carathéodory.
His reputation was that of a gentleman as well as a conscientious intellect. This was averred in the early 1940s, when the ruling Nazis increased their persecutions of German officials who have Jewish ancestry. After Felix Hausdorff (a professor 30 years his senior) had been retired and placed under restrictions, Bessel-Hagen became the only former colleague who visited him regularly. On noticing that Hausdorff used private math researches to while away time, he started bringing him books he had borrowed from a library which no longer welcomed Jews.

Karl Weinbacher (23 June 1898 – 16 May 1946) was a German manager and war criminal who was executed after conviction by a British war tribunal following World War II. He and his boss, Bruno Tesch, were the only businessmen to be executed for their roles in Nazi atrocities and the Holocaust in Western Europe.