1903 births

Hans Fredrik Leganger Finne-Grønn (25 September 1903 – 9 March 2001) was a Norwegian painter.

Ian Glen Collins (23 April 1903 – 20 March 1975) was a Scottish tennis player who represented Great Britain in the Davis Cup.
Collins, primarily a doubles player, never fully recovered from a broken leg in his youth but still had a lengthy tennis career. It was said that due to the contortion he made when he served he looked like a "monkey mounting a pole". He had broken his leg soon after arriving at Magdalen College, Oxford, from Harrow School. Prior to Harrow, he was educated at Sandroyd School. While at Harrow he had appeared in every Eton v Harrow cricket match from 1919 to 1922. He played cricket for the university as a batsman and in 1925 appeared in a first-class match against Middlesex. Two years later he represented Scotland in a first-class match against Ireland.In 1927 he made his Wimbledon debut, the first of 12 Wimbledon Championships that he entered. He missed the Championship in 1933 after injuring himself riding, but appeared in the event every other time until 1939.
His Davis Cup partnership with Colin Gregory proved successful as they were undefeated in their six matches together, in 1929 and 1930. They also combined in major tournaments and made the finals of both the Australian Championship and Wimbledon in 1929. Collins and Gregory lost to Jack Crawford and Harry Hopman in the Australian final in five sets, but beat them in the 1930 Davis Cup. They narrowly lost the Wimbledon final in another five setter, to Wilmer Allison and John Van Ryn. Collins was also a mixed doubles finalist in the 1929 Wimbledon Championship and again in 1931.
As a singles player, Collins had his best showing in 1930 when he reached the fourth round, before being eliminated by Bunny Austin. The following year he had the best win of his career when he defeated number one seed Henri Cochet in the second round of the 1931 Wimbledon Championship in four sets.
He won the Scottish Championships three consecutive times between 1926 and 1928, he was a finalist on six occasions between 1926 and 1936.

Reidar Bruu (11 September 1903 – 2 November 1989) was a Norwegian politician for the Conservative Party.
Reidar Bruu was born in Kristiania. He was elected to the Norwegian Parliament from Oslo in 1958, and was re-elected on two occasions. He had previously served in the position of deputy representative during the term 1954–1957.
Bruu was a member of Oslo city council during the term 1951–1955.
From 1958 to 1969 he was a member of the national party board. He was a member of the council of the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation from 1962 to 1972, board chairman of Televerket from 1969 to 1973 and of the Norwegian National Opera from 1969 to 1975.

Finn Hiorthøy (1903–1991) was a Norwegian judge.
He graduated with the cand.jur. degree in 1926, and then worked as a deputy judge in Nord-Hedmark for some time before being hired in the Norwegian Ministry of Justice and the Police in 1930. His specialty was constitutional law and international law, and he represented Norway internationally. He also wrote books and articles. From 1942 to 1945, during World War II, Hiorthøy stayed in London where he aided the Norwegian government-in-exile. He was promoted to deputy under-secretary of state in the Ministry of Justice in 1945, and represented Norway as an advisor in the United Nations, NATO and the Council of Europe.In 1955, he was named as a Supreme Court Justice. He stood in this position until his retirement in 1973. He died in 1991.

Jorge Alfredo Basadre Grohmann (12 February 1903 – 29 June 1980) was a Peruvian historian known for his extensive publications about the independent history of his country. He served during two different administrations as Minister of Education and was also director of the Peruvian National Library.

Sir David Lumsden Webster (3 July 1903 – 9 May 1971) was the chief executive of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, from 1945 to 1970. He played a key part in the establishment of the Royal Ballet and Royal Opera companies.
From a retail background, Webster became chairman of the Liverpool Philharmonic during the Second World War. From there he was asked to set up opera and ballet companies at Covent Garden. He persuaded the existing Sadler's Wells Ballet to move to the opera house but found no established opera company suitable to do the same, and he set up a new opera company from scratch.
At first, Webster presented opera in English with a permanent company, but as Covent Garden flourished and international stars were attracted to appear, the policy gradually changed to presenting operas in their original language. By the time of Webster's retirement, the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet were world-famous.

Marion Amelia Spence Ross FRSE (9 April 1903 – 3 January 1994) was a Scottish physicist noted for her work in x-ray crystallography and fluid dynamics.

Léo Pétillon (22 May 1903 – 1 April 1996) was a Belgian colonial civil servant and lawyer who served as Governor-General of the Belgian Congo (1952–58) and, briefly, as Minister of the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi (1958).
Pétillon studied Law and practiced as a lawyer, before entering the Belgian colonial service in 1929. He worked for several years at the Ministry of the Colonies in Brussels, serving as aide to a series of ministers. In 1939, he secured a posting to the Belgian Congo as aide to the Governor-General and spent most of World War II in the colony or with the Belgian government in exile in London. In 1946, Pétillon was promoted to Vice Governor-General, given responsibility for the Belgian mandate of Ruanda-Urundi. In 1952, he was promoted to the position of Governor-General himself, holding the position until 1958. After the end of his tenure, he briefly held a Ministerial position himself as technocrat in the government of Gaston Eyskens. He retired in 1959 and published several books. He died in 1996.

Charlotte "Lotte" Ulbricht (née Kühn; 19 April 1903 – 27 March 2002) was a Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) official and the second wife of the East German leader Walter Ulbricht.

Emmy Damerius-Koenen (15 March 1903 – 21 May 1987) was an East German politician. She was married to Helmut Damerius from 1922 to 1927 and later, was married to Wilhelm Koenen. She was a member of the Communist Party of Germany and spent most of the Nazi era outside Germany, in the Soviet Union and other countries. She returned to Germany in December 1945, where she was active in East German women's organizations.