Famous People Who Died Today

Regarded as the father of computer science and artificial intelligence, Alan Turing was a distinguished mathematician and logician. During WWII, he successfully broke the challenging German Enigma machine codes thereby reducing the duration of war by a couple of years. The scientist, who was convicted for being gay, has been an inspiration for numerous films, plays and novels.

Christopher Lee was one of the most respected actors of his generation. Such was his impact on the British and American film industries that David Cameron described him as a titan of the golden age of cinema following his death in 2015. Famous for his deep, strong voice, Christopher Lee was also a popular singer who worked with several metal bands.

Jean Harlow was an actress and sex symbol. Nicknamed the Platinum Blonde and Blonde Bombshell, Harlow was famous for her femme fatale screen persona. She became one of the biggest Hollywood stars despite being in the industry for not more than nine years. Her life and career inspired several movies, such as Harlow and Hughes and Harlow: Angels in Hell.

Best known for his iconic novels Howard’s End and A Passage to India, British author E. M. Forster dealt with themes such as class division and gender. Born in England and educated at Cambridge, he had also spent some time as a secretary to Maharaja Tukojirao III of India.

Poet and author Dorothy Parker rose to fame with her published works in The New Yorker. She later formed the Algonquin Round Table. She also wrote for Hollywood films such as A Star Is Born and earned two Academy Award nominations. However, her association with left-wing politics got her blacklisted.

Dan Duryea was an American actor best remembered for portraying negative roles. However, he was also renowned for his versatility as he played a wide variety of leading roles as well. He also became famous as a TV actor and played important roles in series like China Smith and The New Adventures of China Smith.

Jean Arp was born in Strasbourg, to a German father and a French mother. After studying art in Paris and Switzerland, he co-created The Modern Alliance and participated in the Dada and Abstraction-Création movements. An avant-garde painter and sculptor, he also experimented with media such as embroidery.

German lyric poet and dramatist Friedrich Hölderlin was a significant figure of German Romanticism. Initially pushed to join a Christian ministry by his mother, he later ditched the idea and was inspired by Greek mythology. He later suffered from schizophrenia and spent 36 years in a tower, later named the Hölderlinturm.

Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka was a Polish American phenomenologist and philosopher. She is credited with founding the World Phenomenology Institute (WPI) where she remained as the president until her death in 2014. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka also contributed immensely to the popular book series Analecta Husserliana, serving as its editor since its inception in 1968.

William Williams Keen pioneered brain surgery in the U.S. Working on neurological injuries as an army surgeon, he discovered many previously unknown neurological ailments. He was also part of a secret operation on a yacht to remove a tumor from the upper jaw of U.S. president Grover Cleveland.

Joseph von Fraunhofer was a Bavarian optical lens manufacturer and physicist. He is credited with developing diffraction grating and inventing the spectroscope. He is also credited with discovering the Fraunhofer lines, the dark absorption lines produced in the spectrum of the sun. The Fraunhofer Society, Europe's biggest Society for the Advancement of Applied Research, is named in his honor.

Nara Leão was a Brazilian singer specializing in bossa nova and popular music. As a young girl, she was trained under composer Patricio Teixeira and classical guitarist Solon Ayala. After launching her professional career, she often toured with musician Sérgio Mendes. She shifted to political music during the period of military dictatorship in Brazil. 

Romanian revolutionary leader and a national hero, Tudor Vladimirescu led the Wallachian uprising of 1821. Initially part of the Greek Friendly Brotherhood, to overturn the Turkish rule in the Balkans, he later formed his own Wallachian revolt. He was eventually executed on the orders of Greek nationalist politician Alexander Ypsilantis.

Best known as the inventor of stereo sound, electronic engineer Alan Blumlein had 128 patents in his kitty. He died at age 38, when the Halifax bomber carrying him and his colleagues crashed during World War II. He was apparently part of a secret radar experiment back then.

Alexis Bouvard was a French astronomer, particularly noted for predicting the existence of an eighth planet in the solar system. Also known for discovering eight comets, he wrote Tables astronomiques of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus; but when his tables for Uranus failed, he correctly hypothesized that an unknown planet, later discovered as Neptune, is causing irregularity in its movement.

Ashikaga Takauji is remembered as the founder of the Ashikaga shogunate. Apart from showcasing his military exploits, Takauji had also excelled in waka, a form of Japanese poetry with 31 syllables, and renga, or linked verse. He also promoted the Zen philosophy and built several temples.

Spanish-born author and politician Jorge Semprún mostly wrote in French. He was educated at the Sorbonne and mostly lived in France. He soared to fame with the autobiographical novel The Cattle Truck, while his scripts for the films Z and The War Is Over earned him Academy Award nominations.

Apart from being an actor, best known for the film Mortal Kombat and the series JAG, Trevor Goddard had also been a talented light heavyweight boxer. He also played cricket and football in his youth. He died of an accidental drug overdose at age 40, in his North Hollywood home.