1957 deaths

Lettie Hamlett Rogers (1917 – May 14, 1957) was an American novelist and educator.
She was born in Suzhou, central China, the daughter of missionary parents. She spent her childhood in China and Japan. After graduating from high school at the Shanghai American School she came to the United States to attend Woman's College of the University of North (now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro). Rogers received a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology in 1940, and accepted a position as an assistant in the Sociology Department the following year. She shared a home with faculty members Lyda Gordon Shivers and Mereb Mossman. Two years later she left her position, but remained in North Carolina where she devoted herself full-time to her writing.
In 1948 Rogers returned to the Woman's College as an assistant professor in the English Department to teach creative writing. In 1955 she resigned in protest of the College administration's censure of the staff of the campus arts journal, Coraddi, for publishing a nude male figure drawn by art student Lee Hall (later to become head of the Rhode Island School of Design).
Rogers was well known in North Carolina literary circles. She published four novels, South of Heaven (Random House, 1946), The Storm Cloud (Random House, 1951), Landscape of the Heart (Random House, 1953), and Birthright (Simon & Schuster, 1957). She also wrote one unpublished novel, Murder in the College Degree (1940), under the name "Lettie Logan." The story is set on a fictionalized woman's college campus with faculty members from the history and psychology departments serving as detectives to help local police.

Théophile Ernest de Donder (French: [də dɔ̃dɛʁ]; 19 August 1872 – 11 May 1957) was a Belgian mathematician, physicist and chemist famous for his work (published in 1923) in developing correlations between the Newtonian concept of chemical affinity and the Gibbsian concept of free energy.

Rudolf Gundlach (1892–1957) was a Polish military engineer, inventor and tank designer. He headed the design division of the Armored Weapons Technical Research Bureau (Biuro Badań Technicznych Broni Pancernych). He held the military rank of major in the Corps of Engineers of the Polish Army.
He was the chief designer of the Ursus wz. 29 armored car and supervised design work for the 7TP light tank and the 10TP fast tank prototype.

Martin Elsaesser (28 May 1884 – 5 August 1957) was a German architect and professor of architecture. He is especially well known for the many churches he built.

Erich Auerbach (November 9, 1892 – October 13, 1957) was a German philologist and comparative scholar and critic of literature. His best-known work is Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, a history of representation in Western literature from ancient to modern times frequently cited as a classic in the study of realism in literature. Along with Leo Spitzer, Auerbach is widely recognized as one of the foundational figures of comparative literature.

Richard Mohaupt (14 September 1904 – 3 July 1957) was a German composer and Kapellmeister.

Helene Bresslau Schweitzer (25 January 1879 – 1 June 1957) was a German medical missionary, nurse, social worker, linguist, public medicine enthusiast, editor, feminist, sociologist, and the wife/confidant of Albert Schweitzer, who co-founded the Albert Schweitzer Hospital with her. Albert, a medical missionary, did not mention her role in his efforts. According to writer Mary Kingsley, she is "one form of human being whose praise has never adequately been sung, namely, the missionary's wife."

Benito Alfonso Bedoya y Díaz de Guzmán (April 16, 1904 – December 15, 1957) was a Mexican actor who frequently appeared in U.S. films. He is best known for his role in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, where he played a bandit leader and delivered the "stinking badges" line, which has been called one of the greatest movie quotes in history by the American Film Institute.

Konrad Hermann Theodor Knopp (22 July 1882 – 20 April 1957) was a German mathematician who worked on generalized limits and complex functions.

Oskar Hagen (14 October 1888, Wiesbaden, Germany – 5 October 1957, in Madison, Wisconsin, United States) was a German art historian.While lecturing at the University of Göttingen from 1918 to 1925, Hagen helped establish the Göttingen International Handel Festival. He established the revival of Handel operas in Germany, beginning with his heavily-edited version of Rodelinda in 1920. He later moved to the United States to be professor at the University of Wisconsin, where he founded the department of Art History. In addition to his work as an art historian, Hagen also composed original music. Hagen is the father of actress and drama teacher Uta Hagen.