1981 deaths

Pedro Espinel Torres (August 1, 1908 – November 8, 1981 in Lima) was a Peruvian composer. He is best known for his piece El Rey de las Polkas.

Jean-Jérôme Adam (8 June 1904 – 11 July 1981) was the French Roman Catholic archbishop of Libreville, Gabon, and an accomplished linguist who studied several of the languages of Gabon.
He was born at Wittenheim in Alsace and educated in the seminaries of the Holy Ghost Fathers. He arrived in Gabon on 29 September 1929, and spent the next 18 years as a missionary in the Haut-Ogooué Province. During that time he prepared grammars for the Mbédé, Ndumu, and Duma languages.
In 1947, Adam was appointed Vicar Apostolic of Libreville and bishop of the titular see of Rhinocorura; he became bishop of Libreville when it was elevated to a diocese in 1955, and he was made archbishop of the see in 1958. He retired in 1969 and moved to Franceville, where he died in 1981.

Aimé Maeght (27 April 1906 – 5 September 1981) was a French art dealer, collector, lithographer, and publisher. He founded the Galerie Maeght in Paris and Barcelona, and the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence near Nice (southern France). Though the original Flemish pronunciation is pronounced "makt," the French pronunciation of surname Maeght sounds more similar to mahg.

Charles-Auguste Bontemps (February 9, 1893 – October 14, 1981) was a French individualist anarchist, pacifist, freethinker and naturist activist and writer.

François Bordes (December 30, 1919 – April 30, 1981), also known by the pen name of Francis Carsac, was a French scientist, geologist, archaeologist, and science fiction writer.

Martinus Thomsen, referred to as Martinus, (11 August 1890 – 8 March 1981) was a Danish author, philosopher and mystic. Born into a poor family and with a limited education, Martinus claimed to have had a profound spiritual experience in March 1921. This experience, which he called "cosmic consciousness", would be the inspiration for the books he wrote later on which are collectively entitled The Third Testament. Some of his works have been translated into twenty languages, and while he is not well known internationally, his work remains popular in Denmark and to a lesser extent other parts of Scandinavia.

Hendrik Franciscus Andriessen (17 September 1892 – 12 April 1981) was a Dutch composer and organist. He is remembered most of all for his improvisation at the organ and for the renewal of Catholic liturgical music in the Netherlands. Andriessen composed in a musical idiom that revealed strong French influences. He was the brother of pianist and composer Willem Andriessen and the father of the composers Jurriaan Andriessen and Louis Andriessen and of the flautist Heleen Andriessen.

Édouard Gustave Depreux (31 October 1898 – 16 October 1981) was a French socialist journalist, essayist, and politician of the French Fourth Republic; he was born in Viesly (département of Nord) and died in Paris.

Alice Lon Wyche (November 23, 1926 – April 24, 1981), known as Alice Lon, was an American singer and dancer on The Lawrence Welk Show during its early years on network television.

Helmut Andreas Paul Grieshaber or HAP Grieshaber (15 February 1909 – 12 May 1981) was a German artist. His preferred medium was large format woodcuts.