Famous People Who Died Today

Richard Georg Strauss was a German conductor, composer, violinist, and pianist. Renowned for his pioneering subtleties of orchestration, Strauss is generally regarded as a modernist, although he was initially considered a conservative, backwards-looking composer. Over the years, his music has influenced other prominent composers like Béla Viktor János Bartók, Karol Maciej Szymanowski, Edward Elgar, and Benjamin Britten.

Leni Riefenstahl was a German film director and actress best remembered for her role in producing Nazi propaganda. She made her directorial debut in 1932, becoming one of the few women to direct a movie during the Weimar Period. Riefenstahl is credited with directing two of the most technically innovative propaganda films of all time, Olympia and Triumph des Willens.

A descendant of Pennsylvania founder William Penn through his mother, Hermann von Helmholtz studied medicine, pushed by his father, in spite of being interested in the natural sciences. Best known for his law of conservation of energy, he coalesced the fields of medicine, physiology, math, and physics in his studies.

Andre Derain is considered a co-founder of Fauvism, along with fellow artist Henri Matisse, who was one of his classmates at the Académie Carriere. He also created theatrical décor for Ballets Russes and woodcut book illustrations for authors such as Antonin Artaud and André Breton.

Solomon Linda is best remembered for writing the hit Mbube, later known as Wimoweh and The Lion Sleeps Tonight. Part of the Evening Birds, he never got his due and died poor. His family couldn’t afford to build a headstone for his grave until 18 years after his death.

Zhang Ailing was a Chinese-born American novelist, essayist, and screenwriter. A realist and modernist writer, Chang is credited with writing the scripts of many successful films like Miserable at Middle Age, Qing Chang Ru Zhan Chang, and Jin Suo Ji. Zhang Ailing is also credited with influencing and inspiring many creative writers in Taiwan, including Chu T’ien-wen and Yuan Chiung-chiung.

Nobel Prize-winning Danish nuclear physicist Aage Bohr is best remembered for his work related to the geometry of atomic nuclei. Son of Nobel laureate physicist Niels Bohr, Aage had started his career as an assistant to his father and working on the development of the atomic bomb.

Spanish nobleman, politician and writer Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Santibáñez Villegas, KOS of the Baroque era is counted among the most prominent writers of Spain's Golden Age. Quevedo adhered to the conceptismo style compared to his lifelong rival, Luis de Góngora’s culteranismo style. His notable works include the picaresque novel El Buscón and the satirical prose Los Sueños.

Peter Claver was a Spanish Jesuit missionary and priest. His lifelong work with African slaves made him the patron saint of slaves. Peter Claver was canonized by Pope Leo XIII in 1888. Many organizations, religious congregations, schools, missions, parishes, and hospitals have been named in his honor.

Hideki Yukawa was a Japanese theoretical physicist who won the prestigious Imperial Prize of the Japan Academy in 1940. In 1949, Yukawa became the first Japanese to be honored with the Nobel Prize. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his prediction of the pion. The Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics was inaugurated in 1952 to honor Yukawa's achievements.

John Franklin Enders was an American biomedical scientist best remembered for winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1954 along with Thomas Huckle Weller and Frederick Chapman Robbins for discovering that poliomyelitis viruses have the ability to grow in cultures of different types of tissue. John Franklin Enders is often referred to as the Father of Modern Vaccines.

Willard Libby was an American physical chemist best remembered for his role in the development of radiocarbon dating in 1949. The process revolutionized palaeontology and archaeology. Libby's contributions during the development of this process earned him the 1960 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Willard Libby was also the recipient of the Elliott Cresson Medal, Willard Gibbs Award, and Albert Einstein Award.

Hermann Staudinger was a German organic chemist whose demonstration of the existence of polymers earned him the prestigious Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1953. He also played a key role in the development of pyrethroid insecticides as he was able to explain clearly the molecular structures of pyrethrin I and pyrethrin II. Hermann Staudinger is also credited with discovering ketenes. 

Alexandra David-Néel was a Belgian–French explorer, anarchist, spiritualist, Buddhist, writer, and opera singer. She is best remembered for traveling to important spiritual centers, including Lhasa, Tibet in 1924, when foreigners were forbidden from entering Lhasa. Alexandra David-Néel wrote more than 30 books and her teachings influenced people like Allen Ginsberg, Benjamin Crème, Jack Kerouac, Ram Dass, and Alan Watts.   

Best remembered for his study of occult philosophy, Robert Fludd, the son of English diplomat Sir Thomas Fludd, was also a physician. However, he was criticized for being a medical professional who believed in magic and defended Rosicrucianism. His other interests included cosmology, astrology, and Freemasonry.

Hungarian-American psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, who spent most of life teaching at the State University of New York Health Science Center, was known for his controversial claim that mental illnesses aren’t illnesses at all. Part of the anti-psychiatry movement, he penned books such as The Myth of Mental Illness.

Eijirō Tōno was a Japanese actor who appeared in more than 200 films, 400 television shows, and numerous stage productions during a prolific career that lasted more than 50 years. Eijirō Tōno was also a familiar figure in the Western world, thanks to his appearance in Akira Kurosawa's films like Seven Samurai and Yojimbo. 

Johan Botha was a South African operatic tenor whose career was marked with performances at iconic opera venues like the Vienna State Opera, Opéra Bastille, Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Royal Opera House, and Opera Australia. Johan Botha is credited with recording the most number of operas in the history of South African opera singing.

Italian operatic soprano Magda Olivero is counted among the greatest singers of the 20th-century. In her expansive career spanning almost five-decades, Olivero garnered acclaim appearing in opera houses across Italy and around the world  including in the US and Europe. Some of her memorable performances include essaying leading roles in operas like Fedora, La Fanciulla del West and La Wally.   

One of the pioneers of Gestalt psychology, Austrian philosopher Christian von Ehrenfels also made a significant contribution to the value theory. Apart from his pathbreaking work System of Value Theory, he had also penned plays and pamphlets. He also believed Asians were a threat to the European race.

Ann Lee is remembered as the founder of the Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, also known as the Shakers, for their ritual of shaking during worshipping. Born to a blacksmith in England, she initially worked at a textile mill and later ushered her movement into the U.S.