Famous People Who Died Today

The first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, Princess Diana was a member of the British royal family. As a princess, she became known for her unconventional approach to charity work. She was celebrated as a style icon and fashionista as well. She divorced Charles in 1996 and died in a tragic car accident the following year.

John Ford was an American naval officer and film director. The recipient of five Oscars, Ford is renowned for directing films like The Searchers and Stagecoach. He also holds the record for winning the most number of Academy Awards (four) under the Best Director category.John Ford is widely considered one of the most influential and important filmmakers of his generation.

David Frost was an English media personality, journalist, television host, comedian, and writer. One of the most popular television interviewers of all time, Frost interviewed eight British prime ministers and seven American presidents in office. His interview with Richard Nixon was adapted into a play and film. He also played a key role in the establishment of TV-am in 1983.

Wilhelm Wundt was a German physiologist, professor, and philosopher. He is often counted among the founders of modern psychology and is widely considered the father of experimental psychology. He is also credited with founding the first laboratory for psychological research, which he founded at the University of Leipzig in 1879.

John Bunyan, the noted author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, was known for his belief in Puritanism. The son of a brazier, he initially quit school to join his father’s trade. He was later inspired by chapbooks, to write his iconic works and has also become a preacher.

An Indian politician who served as the 13th President of India, Pranab Mukherjee was a veteran with a political career spanning over five decades. He occupied several ministerial portfolios in the Government of India, such as Defence, Finance and External Affairs. He was honored with Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, in 2019.

French painter Georges Braque is considered one of the pioneers of Cubism. His 1908 masterpiece Large Nude is one of his most celebrated pieces. Critics often argue whether Braque or Picasso had first begun developing Cubism, and many of their works are very similar in nature.

Irish monk Saint Aidan was the first bishop of the island of Lindisfarne, also known as the Holy Island. He later established many churches and monasteries and was one of the most prominent missionaries in northern England. He has also been praised in the writings of Anglo Saxon historian Bede.

British admiral Arthur Phillip was a pioneering leader of the colonization of Australia. He established the first permanent European colonial settlement in Australia. He had also served as the first governor of New South Wales but was unable to establish peace. He was part of the Seven Years' War, too.

Andranik was an Armenian statesman and military commander. He played an important role in the Armenian national liberation movement and took part in the military campaigns as part of Armenia's fight for independence. He also took part in the First Balkan War and World War I. Today, Andranik is considered a national hero in Armenia.

Renowned Canadian journalist and politician Henri Bourassa is best remembered for founding the newspaper Le Devoir. Though a qualified lawyer, he made a name for himself by writing on political issues and also served as a member of the Canadian Parliament, as part of the Liberal Party of Canada.

Urho Kekkonen was the eighth and longest-serving president of Finland. He was noted for continuing and further developing the Paasikivi-Kekkonen doctrine established by his predecessor President Juho Kusti Paasikivi aiming survival of Finland as an independent nation in immediate proximity of the Soviet Union. Kekkonen earlier held several ministerial and legislative posts including serving as as Prime Minister of Finland. 

Sociologist, author, and economic historian Immanuel Wallerstein is best remembered for his iconic work The Modern World System, which was the first volume of his world-system theory. He was a Yale researcher and had first been driven to understand world history when he read up about the anticolonial movement in India.

Norman Kirk was a New Zealand politician best remembered for his service as the Prime Minister of New Zealand from 8 December 1972 until his demise on 31 August 1974. During his term as the Prime Minister, Norman Kirk also served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

German Renaissance painter Matthias Grünewald, also known as Master Mathis, was the court painter of the elector of Mainz. His drawings were mostly made in black chalk. Of his religious works, the Isenheim Altarpiece still survives, though most of his works were destroyed in the Thirty Years' War.

Laurent Fignon was a French professional road bicycle racer. He won the Tour de France in 1983 and 1984. He became the FICP World No. 1 in 1989 and also won the Giro d'Italia the same year. One of the most successful cyclists of his era, he won many classic races. He retired in 1993. 

Remembered as one of the greatest Russian literary figures of the 20th century, Marina Tsvetaeva was an integral part of Russian symbolism. She faced the Russian Revolution and lost her youngest daughter to the famine that followed. After her husband’s execution under espionage accusations, she committed suicide at age 48.

Joseph Rotblat was a physicist remembered for his work on the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II. He left the laboratory on grounds of conscience and his work on nuclear fallout played a key role in the events preceding the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. In 1995, Joseph Rotblat won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Frank Macfarlane Burnet was an Australian virologist. Best remembered for his contribution to immunology, Burnet won the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for predicting acquired immunological tolerance. Burnet is also credited with developing and popularizing the theory of clonal selection. In 1960, he was also named the Australian of the Year for his contributions to science. 

Louis Antoine de Bougainville was a French explorer and admiral. He is best remembered for his scientific expeditions, including his 1763 circumnavigation of the globe and expeditions into the Pacific Ocean. Louis Antoine de Bougainville also participated in the Seven Years' War and the American Revolutionary War.

Enamoured by the ideas of French and German philosophers, Ferdinand Lassalle initially aspired to be a lecturer. He later joined the socialist cause and spearheaded Germany’s social democratic movement. He also introduced terms such as the iron law of wages and concepts such as Lassallism, or achieving socialist ideals through the state.

American architect E. Fay Jones was apprenticed to Frank Lloyd Wright and later also received the AIA Gold Medal. He followed Wright’s famous Prairie style and also designed several structures at the Powell Gardens. His Thorncrown Chapel was included in the National Register of Historic Places.

Canadian-American physical chemist Martin Kamen was part of the team that discovered the synthesis of the isotope carbon-14. He was accused of revealing sensitive information to Russian spies while working at the Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge, and was thus fired from the Radiological Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley.