1957 deaths

Edgar Goldschmid (born 14 December 1881 in Frankfurt, died 26 May 1957 in Lausanne) was a German physician, pathologist and historian of medicine.

Louis Gallavardin (1875, Lyon – 2 December 1957, Lyon) was a French physician and cardiologist remembered for the Gallavardin phenomenon.

Frederic Duran i Jordà (Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, 25 April 1905 – Manchester, United Kingdom, 30 March 1957) was a Spanish medical doctor, pioneer hematology and hemotherapy. He created the first transfusion service in the world in Barcelona in 1936 at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Previously there were blood banks, where donated blood to be transfused was stored. Dr. Duran i Jordà created a methodology that would serve to collect massive blood donations and be transfused distance, in this case the front lines of the Spanish Civil War. This method was subsequently applied in World War II.

Léon Dufourmentel (1884 – July 29, 1957) was a French surgeon, son of a merchant, who specialized in maxillofacial surgery, leading to reconstructive surgery. Intern of Hospitals of Paris, then leader of the clinical faculty of medicine of Paris. He was the son-in-law of the anatomist Pierre Sebileau, and the father of plastic surgeon Claude Dufourmentel (Former head of department at the Hôpital Saint-Louis).
During the First World War, he was responsible for caring for gueules cassées (broken faces), and being led to the creation of units of maxillofacial surgery, he found a method for repairing facial wounds: He described a pedicled vascularized flap from the temporal scalp (popularly called a Dufourmentel flap)(http://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/1418/cadre2e.htm) and transferred the tissue to the chin area. This tissue transfer was more reliable than a free skin graft. It was his idea to first use prosthetic inclusions prior to 1930 - then implants used were mostly made of ivory, rubber on the nose.

Pierre Delbet (15 November 1861 – 17 July 1957) was a French surgeon born in La Ferté-Gaucher.

Marguerite de Morlaye (29 January 1870, Saint-Mandé –18 September 1957, Paris) was a French actress.

Robert Albert Charles Esnault-Pelterie (8 November 1881 – 6 December 1957) was a French aircraft designer and spaceflight theorist. He is referred to as being one of the founders of modern rocketry and astronautics, along with the Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the Germans Hermann Oberth, Wernher Von Braun and the American Robert H. Goddard.

Maurice Audin (14 February 1932 – c. 21 June 1957) was a renowned French mathematics assistant at the University of Algiers, a member of the Algerian Communist Party and an activist in the anticolonialist cause, who died under torture by the French state during the Battle of Algiers.In the centre of Algiers, beside the university, the intersection of streets bearing the names of several other heroes of the Algerian Revolution is called the Place Maurice-Audin. He is also memorialized by the Maurice Audin Prize, sponsored by the Société de Mathématiques Appliquées et Industrielles, the Société Mathématique de France, and others, and granted biennially to an Algerian mathematician working in Algeria and a French mathematician working in France.

Jeanne Roques (23 February 1889 – 11 December 1957), known professionally as Musidora, was a French actress, film director, and writer. She is best known for her acting in silent films, and rose to public attention for roles in the Louis Feuillade serials Les Vampires as Irma Vep and in Judex as Marie Verdier.

Walter John Buchanan (2 April 1891 – 20 October 1957) was a Scottish theatre and film actor, singer, dancer, producer and director. He was known for three decades as the embodiment of the debonair man-about-town in the tradition of George Grossmith Jr., and was described by The Times as "the last of the knuts." He is best known in America for his role in the classic Hollywood musical The Band Wagon in 1953.