* 1939 – 1945, the Second Battle of the Atlantic.

Subsequent formalizations were framed as attempts to define " effective calculability " or " effective method "; those formalizations included the Gödel – Herbrand – Kleene recursive functions of 1930, 1934 and 1935, Alonzo Church's lambda calculus of 1936, Emil Post's " Formulation 1 " of 1936, and Alan Turing's Turing machines of 1936 – 7 and 1939.

* 1890 – Anthony Fokker, Dutch aviation engineer ( d. 1939 )

* 1939 – André Ouellet, French-Canadian politician

* 1852 – Ferdinand von Lindemann, German mathematician ( d. 1939 )

* 1939 – Alan Ayckbourn, English writer

* 1939 – Johnny Raper, Australian rugby league footballer

* 1939 – The 1939-40 New York World's Fair opens.

* 1939 – NBC inaugurates its regularly scheduled television service in New York City, broadcasting President Franklin D. Roosevelt's N. Y. World's Fair opening day ceremonial address.

* 1939 – First flight of the turbojet-powered Heinkel He 178, the world's first jet aircraft.

* 1939 – William Least Heat-Moon, American author

* 1939 – Edward Patten, American singer-songwriter and producer ( Gladys Knight & the Pips ) ( d. 2005 )

* 1939 – Bulle Ogier, French actress

* 1939 – Romano Prodi, Italian politician and statesman

* 1939 – Hércules Brito Ruas, Brazilian footballer

* 1939 – Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd write a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon.

* 1939 – Benjamin Barber, American theorist

* 1939 – Wes Craven, American director

* 1939 – John W. Snow, American politician, 73rd United States Secretary of the Treasury

* 1984 – Marvin Gaye, American singer ( The Moonglows ) ( b. 1939 )

* 2001 – Trinh Cong Son, Vietnamese composer ( b. 1939 )

Eastern European theorists include Pyotr Stolypin ( 1862 – 1911 ) and Alexander Chayanov ( 1888 – 1939 ) in Russia ; Adolph Wagner ( 1835 – 1917 ), and Karl Oldenberg in Germany, and Bolesław Limanowski ( 1835 – 1935 ) in Poland.

* 1992 – Michael Gothard, English actor ( b. 1939 )

* 1939 – Michael Gothard, English actor ( d. 1992 )

* 1939 – Michael Longley, Irish poet

* 1939 – Prince Michael of Greece and Denmark

* 1939 – Michael J. Pollard, American actor

* 1993 – Michael Beecher, Australian-based model and actor ( b. 1939 )

* 1939 – Michael Schwerner, American civil rights activist ( d. 1964 )

** Michael Schwerner, American civil rights activist ( killed in Mississippi ) ( b. 1939 )

* Michael Alfred Peszke, Battle for Warsaw, 1939 – 1944, East European Monographs, 1995, ISBN 978-0-88033-324-5.

Examples of performers who went on to universal recognition are Jeremy Brett, Judi Dench, Rosemary Harris, Ian McKellen, Christopher Plummer, Harold Pinter, Imelda Staunton, Lynn Redgrave, Vanessa Redgrave, Patrick Stewart, Geraldine McEwan, Ronnie Barker, Dirk Bogarde, who wrote about his start at tiny Amersham rep in 1939, and Michael Caine, who recounts his time spent at Horsham rep in the early fifties, to present just a few.

* Hamlet Volume I with Michael Fraenkel, New York: Carrefour, 1939.

* Michael Schoenberg ( 1939 – 2008 ), American geophysicist

At the time, the Chicago Tribunes movie critic, Michael Wilmington, called Hell's Hinges " Hart's acknowledged masterpiece ," " perhaps the finest movie Western made before John Ford's 1939 Stagecoach ," and " as emotionally powerful as any American film of the teens, except for the masterpieces of D. W. Griffith and Erich Von Stroheim.

It was not until 1935 that another ICI chemist, Michael Perrin, developed this accident into a reproducible high-pressure synthesis for polyethylene that became the basis for industrial LDPE production beginning in 1939.

Carl Michael Yastrzemski (; nicknamed " Yaz "; born August 22, 1939 ) is a former American Major League Baseball left fielder and first baseman.

Michael Joseph " Mike " Farrell ( born February 6, 1939 ) is an American actor, best known for his role as Captain B. J.

Reviewing Hobsbawm's 2011 How to Change the World in The Wall Street Journal, Michael Moynihan argued: Reviewing the same book, Francis Wheen argued in a similar vein: " When writing about how the anti-fascist campaigns of the 1930s brought new recruits to the communist cause, he cannot even bring himself to mention the Hitler-Stalin pact, referring only to ' temporary episodes such as 1939 – 41 '.

Michael E. Comerford ( 1865 – 1939 ) was born at Heckscherville, Pennsylvania, to parents who had recently immigrated to the United States from County Kilkenny, Ireland.

Harris ' siblings include Patrick Ivan ( born 1929 ), Noel William Michael ( born 1932 ), Diarmid ( Dermot, born 1939 ), and William George Harris ( born 1942 ).

Numerous films have been made at Twickenham since the end of Hagen's tenure including Carol Reed's The Stars Look Down in 1939, In the 1960s classic films such as Alfie starring Michael Caine, The Italian Job in 1969 with Noël Coward, Roman Polanski's first English language film in 1965 Repulsion ; Be My Guest in 1965, featured Jerry Lee Lewis an early appearance by the young actor Steve Marriott and The Nashville Teens.

James " Jim " Michael Palosaari ( 1939 – 2011 ) was an evangelist and performer, one of the leaders in the Jesus Movement of the late 1960s and 1970s.

The poet Michael Longley ( born 1939 ) has experimented with Ulster Scots for the translation of Classical verse, as in his 1995 collection The Ghost Orchid.

Michael John Pollack, Jr. ( born May 30, 1939 ) is an American actor.

She has three brothers: Michael Damien ( 1939 – 1958 ), Patrick Joseph ( 1942 – 2009 ) and John Charles ( born 1946 ).