Famous People Who Died In 1917

French Impressionist artist Edgar Degas is best remembered for his oil paintings and pastel drawings and for his signature use of dancers and bathing women as themes in his works such as Fin d'Arabesque and Woman in a Tub. He had also experimented with bronze sculptures and called himself a realist.

Emile Durkheim was a French sociologist. He is credited with establishing the discipline of sociology for academic purposes and is widely regarded as the chief architect of modern social science. During his lifetime, Emile Durkheim published several works on topics like morality, religion, and education. He also played a major role in the development of sociology and anthropology as disciplines.

Tom Thomson was a Canadian artist best remembered for producing some of Canada's most iconic works, namely The West Wind and The Jack Pine. Thomson's work has had a profound influence on Canadian art and he is often regarded as an unofficial member of the famous Group of Seven as he died shortly before the establishment of the iconic group.

Dadabhai Naoroji was an Indian scholar and political leader. Dubbed the Grand Old Man of India, Naoroji is remembered for co-founding the Indian National Congress where he served as the president on three occasions. He also played an important role in India's fight for freedom, popularizing the Indian wealth drain theory through his book Poverty and Un-British Rule in India.

The first female doctor and surgeon of Britain, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was initially denied admission to medical schools because of her gender and had thus started studying privately. Soon after joining the Marylebone Dispensary as an attendant, she contributed to the formation of the New Hospital for Women.

German general and inventor Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin is best-remembered for inventing the Zeppelin rigid airships and pioneering development of rigid airships during early 20th century. Zeppelin eventually founded the German aircraft manufacturing company called Luftschiffbau Zeppelin that played an instrumental role in the design and manufacture of rigid airships and emerged as the leading manufacturer of large lighter-than-air vehicles.

L. L. Zamenhof was an ophthalmologist best remembered for creating the most widely spoken international auxiliary language, Esperanto. He came up with the constructed language after being consumed by the idea of a warless world. L. L. Zamenhof received several honors for creating Esperanto, including the Légion d'honneur. He also received 12 nominations for the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize.

British boxer Bob Fitzsimmons initially spent a lot of time in his family’s blacksmith’s forge in New Zealand, thus later earning the nickname The Fighting Blacksmith. He later scripted history as the first boxer to win world titles in three categories, the middleweight, the light-heavyweight, and the heavyweight divisions.

Dragutin Dimitrijević was a Serbian army officer best remembered for his association with a secret military society called the Black Hand, which organized the May Coup and the assassination of Queen Draga and King Alexander I of Serbia. Dragutin Dimitrijević was found guilty of conspiracy and executed by firing squad on 26 June 1917.

Widely regarded as the founder of Intentionalism, or act psychology, German philosopher Franz Brentano was also a Roman Catholic priest. He also taught philosophy at the University of Würzburg and the University of Vienna and penned the iconic works Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint and Inquiry into Sense Psychology.

Educated at Oxford, poet Edward Thomas spent a considerable time working rather reluctantly as a journalist and penning nature studies and critiques of 19th-century authors. An encounter with Robert Frost inspired him to write poems. He was killed in action in Arras, France, during World War I.

Adolf von Baeyer was a German chemist who is best known for synthesizing indigo. Interested in science from a young age,  he studied chemistry at the University of Heidelberg, where his mentor was the prominent organic chemist August Kekulé. He went on to have a successful career and received the 1905 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Teresa Carreno was a Venezuelan composer, conductor, and pianist. During the course of her illustrious career, which spanned more than 50 years, Carreno achieved international popularity as a virtuoso pianist and was nicknamed the Valkyrie of the Piano. Carreno is also credited with teaching pianists like Edward MacDowell, who went on to become a popular pianist in his own right.

Nobel Prize-winning German physiologist Emil Adolf von Behring is remembered as a pioneer of immunology for his research on serum therapy developed an antitoxin to cure diphtheria. One of the 13 children of his parents, he had studied medicine at a military academy due to lack of funds.

One of the best-known French fighter pilots of World War I, Georges Guynemer reportedly shot 54 enemy planes. Awarded with honors such as the Légion d'honneur and the Médaille militaire, he was a national hero. He went MIA and was later declared dead after he failed to return from a combat mission in 1917.

Nobel Prize-winning German biochemist Eduard Buchner was the first to demonstrate how the enzymes in yeast cause the fermentation of carbohydrates. He also taught at various universities, such as Berlin and Breslau. He died in the Battle of Mărășești, while serving as a major, during World War I.

Emil Theodor Kocher was a Swiss medical researcher and physician. In 1909, Kocher became the first surgeon and first Swiss citizen to receive a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He earned the prize for his work in the pathology, physiology, and surgery of the thyroid. He was widely regarded as a leader and pioneer in the field of surgery.

Known for his pioneering work in cultural anthropology, Edward Burnett Tylor penned iconic works such as Primitive Culture, which was partially influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution. Born to affluent Quaker parents, he quit school to focus on his business but was later drawn to anthropology. He popularized the term animism.

Serbian army commander Radomir Putnik was the country’s first Field Marshal and Chief of the General Staff. He led the Serbs in the Balkan Wars and World War I. One of his most significant wins was against the Austro-Hungarian army in the battles of Cer and Kolubara in 1914.

Finnish symbolist painter and graphic artist Hugo Gerhard Simberg was most noted for his paintings that were made on macabre and supernatural topics depicting gloomy and otherworldly scenes. Two of his most recognizable paintings include The Wounded Angel that was voted in 2006 by the Ateneum art museum as "national painting" of Finland; and The Garden of Death.  

Frances Xavier Cabrini was an Italian-American nun who founded a Catholic religious institute called the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The institute played a major role in supporting Italian immigrants to the US. In 1946, Frances Xavier Cabrini became the first American citizen to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church.

Victor Alexander Bruce, 9th Earl of Elgin was a British politician who served as the governor-general of India from 1894 to 1899. He is remembered for presiding over an investigative enquiry pertaining to the Boer War. The enquiry, which came to be known as The Elgin Commission, was the first to consider the feelings of the relatives of the dead.

Conservative Russian politician Ivan Logginovich Goremykin was the second prime minister of Russia. Born into an aristocratic family, he grew up to serve as a bureaucrat for most of his career and had also been the minister of the interior of Imperial Russia. He was the symbol of loyalty to the tsarist regime.

Austro-Hungarian naval chief who led during World War I, Anton Haus later served as the Navy's Grand Admiral. He also penned the iconic academic text Oceanography and Maritime Meteorology when he worked as a teacher at the Naval Academy. He also supported unrestricted submarine warfare, a technique followed by the Germans.