Famous People Who Died Today

Italian painter and architect Raphael, along with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, formed the great trio who ushered in the High Renaissance. He is mostly known for his frescoes of the Vatican Palace and The School of Athens. He also designed the Chigi Chapel, among other structures in Rome.

Don Rickles was an American actor, author, and stand-up comedian. Nicknamed The Merchant of Venom, Don Rickles specialized in insult comedy. Apart from appearing in several talk and variety shows as a guest, Rickles had his own sitcom titled The Don Rickles Show. After his death, many celebrities including Tom Hanks, Martin Scorsese, and Robert De Niro paid their tributes.

Isaac Asimov was an American writer. Best known for his science fiction works, Asimov was regarded as one of the Big Three writers along with Arthur C. Clarke and Robert A. Heinlein. Asimov is credited with influencing most sci-fi writers since the 1950s. Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman stated that one of Asimov's works inspired him to take up Economics.

Albrecht Durer was a German painter, theorist, and printmaker of the German Renaissance. During his 20s, Durer established his reputation as a popular printmaker across Europe, thanks to his high-quality woodcut prints. His popularity enabled him to work with major Italian artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Giovanni Bellini, and Raphael. Albrecht Durer also influenced generations of artists, especially in printmaking.

Four-time Grammy-winning Russian composer and pianist Igor Stravinsky is regarded as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. He is remembered for his ballets The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring. He broke the traditional flow of music and incorporated his own style.

Don Shirley was an American jazz and classical pianist and composer. He is best remembered for his association with Cadence Records where he recorded many albums during the 1950s and 1960s. Apart from performing in numerous concert tours, Shirley also wrote organ symphonies and piano concerti. Shirley's friendship with his bodyguard Tony Lip was dramatized in the film Green Book.

Painter Thomas Kinkade is remembered for his realistic and idyllic themes. He gained fame by selling printed copies of his art through the Thomas Kinkade Company. He called himself the "Painter of Light” and copyrighted the phrase, too. The movie Thomas Kinkade's Christmas Cottage was based on his life.

James Drury was the quintessential tall, dark, and handsome Western hero of Hollywood in the 1950s and the 1960s. he had started his acting career at age 12. Interestingly he graduated in horticulture and animal husbandry. He is best remembered for his role in the NBC series The Virginian.

Born to a pastor, Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel first showcased his mathematical skills in his cathedral school and later became a pioneer of various mathematical concepts. He died of tuberculosis, amid poverty, before he could learn that he had been appointed to teach at the University of Berlin.

Remembered as the principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I, Francis Walsingham had initially followed in his father’s footsteps to study law. He fled after Mary Tudor came to power and returned when Elizabeth took over the throne. He later employed spies to counter Catholic conspiracies such as the Throckmorton Plot.

Nadja Regin was a Serbian actress who achieved international prominence during the 1960s by appearing in British television series like The Benny Hill Show, Maigret, and Danger Man. Regin is one of the few actresses to have played important roles in two James Bond films; From Russia with Love and Goldfinger. Nadja Regin also had a prolific literary career.

Initially a World Wrestling Championship silver medal-winning wrestler, Mohammad Ali Fardin later ventured into filmmaking and acting. The popular Iranian actor was later nicknamed King of Hearts, after one of his movies. Unfortunately, in the post-revolutionary period, he faced a life-time ban from acting in his country.

William Hamilton didn’t just hold significant posts such as that of the British ambassador to Naples, but also made extensive studies at Vesuvius and Etna, as a volcanologist. He was also a passionate collector of Greek and Roman vases, and many of his prized possessions are now housed at the British Museum.

Predrag Živković Tozovac was a Serbian folk singer and composer. Also an accomplished entertainer and accordion player, Tozovac appeared in films and hosted a number of music TV shows during the course of his illustrious career. During his 40-year-long musical career, Predrag Živković Tozovac recorded more than 20 albums and 30 singles.

Juvénal Habyarimana was a Rwandan politician whose presidency, which spanned from 1973 until his death in 1994, was responsible for pushing Rwanda into extreme poverty. His assassination on 6 April 1994 helped spark the Rwandan genocide, which had lasting effects on Rwanda. The genocide resulted in the death of nearly 1 million Rwandans.

Nobel Prize-winning Belgian immunologist and microbiologist Jules Bordet is remembered for his discovery of blood serum components that are capable of destroying bacteria. He later established the Pasteur Institute of Brussels and taught at the Free University of Brussels. He also discovered the Bordetella pertussis bacteria that causes whooping cough.

Chinese astrophysicist and activist Fang Lizhi inspired the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The dissident was expelled from the Chinese Communist Party for his activities, but that didn’t stop his research, which took him to institutes in the US and Great Britain. He also taught at the University of Arizona.

Born into the famous Russian astronomer Struve family, Otto Struve began his career in the USA as a staff member at Yerkes Observatory, investigating stellar spectroscopy. Later, he focused mainly on binary and variable stars, stellar rotation and interstellar matter. He established the presence of hydrogen in interstellar space, a discovery that played significant part in the development of radio astronomy.

Kōichi Kido, the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal of Japan, was Emperor Hirohito's closest aide during Japan’s invasion of China and World War II. His journal, which he maintained during World War II, was used to prosecute Japanese defendants. Though he received a life sentence, he got parole later.

José Bonifácio de Andrada was a Brazilian statesman. He was also a naturalist, mineralist, and professor. He was a significant proponent of Brazilian independence and also spearheaded the abolition project in Brazil. He was of the opinion that a new national capital should be created in Brazil's underdeveloped interior. As a naturalist, he discovered four new minerals. 

Once president of the German Federal Republic, or West Germany, Heinrich Lübke was born to a cobbler and slowly rose up to be a member of the Centre Party and then the Christian Democratic Union. Not a great public speaker, he was often ridiculed for his failing memory at public events.

Ana Maria was a Salvadoran political figure who was second in command of a guerrilla military and political organization called the Fuerzas Populares de Liberación Farabundo Martí (FPL). An intellectual, Ana Maria was regarded as an icon among revolutionary women. She was assassinated on April 6, 1983 by her own comrades in Managua, Nicaragua.

David Thouless was a British physicist specializing in condensed-matter physics. He had a brilliant academic career and was the first director of studies in physics at Churchill College, Cambridge. He also taught at the University of Birmingham and the University of Washington. He won the 2016 Nobel Prize for Physics jointly with F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz.