×
Cowan George (b. 1920-02-15 / d. 2012-04-20)
He was an American physical chemist, a businessman and philanthropist. Cowan received a B.S. from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1941. He did graduate studies at Princeton, where he worked under future Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner, whose investigation of uranium confirmed the feasibility of the Fermi pile. He continued his nuclear research with the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago, Oak Ridge, Columbia University, and Los Alamos. Because he was transferred to various locations as a technological troubleshooter for the effort, he was among the very few people with knowledge of the separate components of the bomb, kept apart for security reasons. He joined the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1946. He earned a Ph.D. from the Mellon College of Science in 1950. Weeks after his arrival at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1949, he directed the detection of radioactive fallout from samples collected near the Russian border indicating the Soviets were in possession of a nuclear bomb. He later served on the Bethe Panel that convinced government decision makers the radiochemistry detected represented weapons uses rather than peaceful pursuits.
Lookup: name or firstname or alias or date (yyyy-mm-dd):
76
Born 1947-08-21. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Cancer
Frédéric Mitterrand was a French politician who served as Minister of Culture and Communication of France from 2009 to 2012 under President Nicolas Sarkozy. He was an actor, screenwriter, television presenter, writer, producer, and director. In April 2023, Frédéric Mitterrand announced that he was "ill". Without revealing the nature of his illness, he drew a parallel with Florent Pagny, who was battling lung cancer at the time, saying "Me, in front of my mirror, I don't want the chemo look ".
65
Born 1958-09-26. Domain:Music. Cause of death:Unknown
Frank Darcel was a French writer, musician and music producer. He was a leading French rock guitarist during the 1980s with the band Marquis de Sade and with his collaboration with Étienne Daho. Darcel was also Breton nationalist activist and member of the Breton Party. He ran for municipal elections in Rennes on an autonomist list. Frank Darcel was found dead on 14 March 2024 on a beach in Galicia in north-west Spain. According to the Galician emergency services, his body was discovered by walkers on the rocks of Los Castros beach in the municipality of Ribadeo. He was "in an easily accessible place, just beside the stairs leading to the beach ". According to the initial findings of the investigation, suicide has not been ruled out.
68
Born 1955-04-05. Domain:Art. Cause of death:Other
Akira Toriyama (Japanese: 鳥山明, Hepburn: Toriyama Akira) was a Japanese manga artist and character designer. He first achieved mainstream recognition for creating the popular manga series Dr. Slump, before going on to create Dragon Ball (his most famous work) and acting as a character designer for several popular video games such as the Dragon Quest series, Chrono Trigger, and Blue Dragon. Toriyama came to be regarded as one of the most important authors in the history of manga with his works highly influential and popular, particularly Dragon Ball, which many manga artists cite as a source of inspiration. Toriyama died of an acute subdural hematoma, at the age of 68. A subdural hematoma (SDH) is a type of bleeding in which a collection of blood—usually but not always associated with a traumatic brain injury—gathers between the inner layer of the dura mater and the arachnoid mater of the meninges surrounding the brain. It usually results from tears in bridging veins that cross the subdural space.
101
Born 1922-08-22. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
Micheline Presle, born Micheline Nicole Julia Émilienne Chassagne, was a French actress. She was sometimes billed as Micheline Prelle. Starting her career in 1937, she starred in over 50 films, appearing firstly in productions in her native France and also in Hollywood during the era of Classical Hollywood Cinema. Subsequently she returned to French films from the mid-1960s until 2014.
47
Born 1976-06-04. Domain:Politics. Cause of death:Murder
Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny (Russian: Алексей Анатольевич Навальный, IPA: [ɐlʲɪkˈsʲej ɐnɐˈtolʲjɪvʲɪtɕ nɐˈvalʲnɨj]) was a Russian opposition leader, lawyer, anti-corruption activist, and political prisoner. He organised anti-government demonstrations and ran for office to advocate reforms against corruption in Russia and against President Vladimir Putin and his government. Navalny was founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). He was recognised by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience, and was awarded the Sakharov Prize for his work on human rights. In December 2023, Navalny went missing from prison for almost three weeks. He re-emerged in an Arctic Circle corrective colony in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. On 16 February 2024, the Russian prison service reported that Navalny had died at the age of 47. His death sparked protests, both in Russia and in various other countries. Accusations against the Russian authorities in connection with his death have been made by many Western governments and international organisations.
95
Born 1928-03-30. Domain:Politics. Cause of death:Age
Robert Badinter was a French lawyer, politician, and author who enacted the abolition of the death penalty in France in 1981, while serving as Minister of Justice under François Mitterrand. He also served in high-level appointed positions with national and international bodies working for justice and the rule of law.
87
Born 1936-06-13. Domain:Sport. Cause of death:Age
Michel Jazy was a French middle-distance runner and long-distance runner. He won the 1500 metres silver medal at the 1960 Summer Olympics, as well as two golds (in 1962 and 1966) and one silver (in 1966) at the European Championships. He set nine world records in the mile (once), 2000 metres (twice) and 3000 metres (twice), the two miles (twice) and the 4×1500 metres relay (twice).
78
Born 1945-09-11. Domain:Sport. Cause of death:Age
Franz Anton Beckenbauer (German pronunciation: [fʁants ˈʔantoːn ˈbɛkn̩ˌbaʊɐ]) was a German professional football player, manager, and official. Nicknamed "der Kaiser" ('the Emperor'), he was a versatile player who started out as a midfielder, but made his name as a central defender. He is often credited as having invented the role of the modern sweeper (libero). He is one of nine players to have won the FIFA World Cup, the European Champions Cup, and the Ballon d'Or.
51
Born 1972-03-03. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Accident
Christian Oliver was a German actor who was mainly known for his role in the Cobra 11 television series. Born Christian Klepser in Celle, Oliver grew up in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Oliver relocated to the United States to work as a model and subsequently took acting lessons in New York and Los Angeles. From 2002 until 2004, Oliver co-starred in 28 episodes of the German action TV series Alarm für Cobra 11. Oliver and his two daughters, Madita and Annik, were killed after the four-seater private plane they were on crashed off the coast of Bequia. Everyone on board, including the American pilot, Robert Sachs, was killed on impact.
95
Born 1928-11-01. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Age
Claude Bloch was a deportee and survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Stutthof concentration camps. Arrested with his mother in June 1944 in Crépieux-la-Pape, Rhône, by Paul Touvier, head of the Lyon militia, he was deported by convoy 77, the last convoy to leave the Drancy camp for Auschwitz. As a survivor of the Shoah, he became a "passeur de mémoire" of the deportation.
32
Born 1991-02-24. Domain:Sport. Cause of death:Murder
Melissa Hoskins was an Australian track and road racing cyclist. She topped the general classification in the 2012 Tour of Chongming Island. She was a member of the Australian track cycling team pursuit team that finished in fourth place at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Hoskins announced her retirement from professional cycling on 2 May 2017. Hoskins died after being struck by a vehicle allegedly driven by her husband, cyclist Rohan Dennis.
98
Born 1925-07-20. Domain:Politics. Cause of death:Age
Jacques Lucien Jean Delors (French pronunciation: [ʒak lysjɛ̃ ʒɑ̃ dəlɔʁ]) was a French politician who served as the eighth president of the European Commission from 1985 to 1995. Delors played a key role in the creation of the single market, the euro and the modern European Union.
74
Born 1949-04-19. Domain:Politics. Cause of death:Age
Patrick Buisson was a French right-wing essayist, journalist and political advisor. He was a journalist for Minute, Valeurs Actuelles and Le Crapouillot as well as La Chaîne Info. He wrote several books about Vichy France, the Algerian War and the Indochina War. The founder and co-owner of Publifact, a polling agency, he was a key advisor to former President Nicolas Sarkozy from 2006 to 2012, during which time he surreptitiously recorded private conversations he had with the president. He was the co-presenter of Historiquement show, a television program on Histoire, a subsidiary of the TF1 Group, which he chaired.
81
Born 1942-09-18. Domain:Politics. Cause of death:Age
Wolfgang Schäuble (German pronunciation: [ˈvɔlfɡaŋ ˈʃɔʏblə]) was a German politician whose political career spanned more than five decades. A member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), he was the longest-serving member of any democratic German parliament. Schäuble served as the 13th president of the Bundestag from 2017 to 2021.
79
Born 1944-07-22. Domain:TV/Radio. Cause of death:Age
Claude Villers, whose real name was Claude Marx, was born in Everly (Seine-et-Marne) and died in Mussidan (Dordogne), a French journalist and radio and television personality. He spent most of his radio career at France Inter, where he was successively sketch writer, host and producer. He is also a writer and traveler, with a passion for trains, ocean liners, travel and adventure.
86
Born 1937-05-22. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
Guy Marchand was a French actor, musician, and singer. He was best known for his role as the fictional private detective Nestor Burma and as the singer of the song "Destinée".
60
Born 1963-08-08. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Suicide
Emmanuelle Debever was a French actress. In 1983, she landed the lead role in Un jeu brutal by Jean-Claude Brisseau, in which she starred opposite Bruno Cremer. The same year, she starred in Andrzej Wajda's Danton as Louison Danton, the young wife of revolutionary figure Georges Jacques Danton, played by Gérard Depardieu. She also played a supporting role in the comedy My Other Husband, by George Lautner, with Miou-Miou, followed by the telefilm thriller Quidam alongside Richard Bohringer. Debever died on 6 December 2023, at the age of 60. Her death was first reported by Libération, which initially reported the date as 7 December. The newspaper later issued a correction, citing Debever's sister. Debever died after a week of hospitalization following a suicide attempt in which she jumped off a bridge into the Seine. Debever had been reported missing by her partner on 29 November after disappearing from their home and leaving a concerning note. Her death came the day before the release of France 2's investigative news show Complément d'enquête in which she presented her allegations against Gérard Depardieu. Prosecutors in Paris have opened an investigation to determine the causes of her death.
65
Born 1957-12-25. Domain:Music. Cause of death:alcohol, other drugs
Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan was a British-born Irish singer-songwriter and musician best known as the lead vocalist and primary lyricist of Celtic punk band the Pogues. He also produced solo material and collaborated with artists including Joe Strummer, Nick Cave, Steve Earle, Sinéad O'Connor, Ronnie Drew, and Cruachan. Frequently noted for his exceptional songwriting ability as well as his heavy alcohol and drug use, MacGowan was described by The New York Times as "a titanically destructive personality and a master songsmith whose lyrics painted vivid portraits of the underbelly of Irish immigrant life". MacGowan was long known for having very bad teeth. He lost the last of his natural teeth sometime around 2008. In 2015, he had a new set of teeth—including one gold tooth—fitted in a nine-hour procedure. The new set of teeth was secured by eight titanium implants in his jaws. The procedure was the subject of the hour-long television programme Shane MacGowan: A Wreck Reborn. It was reported in July 2023 that MacGowan was hospitalised in an intensive care unit. Following treatment for an infection, he was discharged from St. Vincent's University Hospital in November 2023. On 30 November 2023, after receiving last rites, MacGowan died from pneumonia at his home in Dublin with his wife by his side; he was 65.
70
Born 1953-02-09. Domain:Politics. Cause of death:Heart attack
Michèle Rivasi was a French politician who served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2009 until her death in 2023, for Europe Écologie–The Greens. Rivasi died from a heart attack in Brussels.
76
Born 1947-06-20. Domain:Politics. Cause of death:Cancer (stomach)
Gérard Collomb was a French politician who served as Mayor of Lyon from 2001 to 2017 and again from 2018 until 2020. A member of La République En Marche! (LREM) since he left the Socialist Party (PS) in 2017, he was Minister of the Interior in the first and second government of Prime Minister Édouard Philippe from 2017 to 2018. Disagreements with President Emmanuel Macron led Collomb to resign and return as Mayor of Lyon. He was a councillor for both the City of Lyon and Lyon Metropolis from 2020 until his death in 2023. Gérard Collomb died at the age of 76, after a battle with stomach cancer.[
50
Born 1973-03-09. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Cancer (lung)
Rona Hartner was a German-Romanian actress, painter and singer who was born in Bucharest. As an actress, she was best known for her role in Tony Gatlif's film Gadjo dilo. Hartner focused on her music career, specializing in Gypsy music. After a battle with lung and brain cancer, she died in Toulon at the age of 50. She had lived in France for over two decades at the time of her death.
94
Born 1929-07-19. Domain:Writing. Cause of death:Age
Emmanuel Bernard Le Roy Ladurie was a French historian whose work was mainly focused upon Languedoc in the Ancien Régime, particularly the history of the peasantry. One of the leading historians of France, Le Roy Ladurie has been called the "standard-bearer" of the third generation of the Annales school and the "rock star of the medievalists", noted for his work in social history.
54
Born 1969-08-19. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:alcohol, other drugs
Matthew Langford Perry was an American and Canadian actor. He starred as Chandler Bing on the NBC television sitcom Friends from 1994 to 2004, and won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series for the role. Perry also appeared on Ally McBeal (2002) and received Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his performances in The West Wing (2003) and The Ron Clark Story (2006). He gained a leading role in the NBC series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip which aired from 2006 to 2007. Perry also became known for his leading film roles in Fools Rush In (1997), Almost Heroes (1998), Three to Tango (1999), The Whole Nine Yards (2000), Serving Sara (2002), The Whole Ten Yards (2005), and 17 Again (2009). He voiced Benny in the video game Fallout: New Vegas (2010). While Perry did not drink on the set of Friends, he did work with extreme hangovers and was sometimes sweating and shaking. Perry became addicted to Vicodin after a jet-ski accident in 1997, and completed a 28-day rehab program at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation that year. His weight dropped as low as 128 pounds (58 kg) and he took as many as 55 Vicodin pills per day. At age 30, he suffered from alcohol-induced pancreatitis and erectile dysfunction; in May 2000, he was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. In February 2001, Perry paused productions of Friends and Serving Sara for 2 months, entering rehab for an addiction to Vicodin, methadone, amphetamines, and alcohol. Fifteen years later, he revealed that due to his addiction issues, he did not remember three years of the time he was acting on Friends, between seasons three and six. In 2018, Perry spent five months in a hospital for a gastrointestinal perforation. During the hospital stay, Perry nearly died after his colon burst from opioid abuse. He spent two weeks in a coma and used a colostomy bag for nine months. Upon being admitted to the hospital, doctors told his family that Perry had a 2% chance of survival. He was connected to an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine, which breathed for him. Two years afterwards, while attending rehab in Switzerland, Perry faked pain to get a prescription of 1,800 milligrams of Oxycontin per day and was having daily ketamine infusions. He was given propofol in conjunction with a surgery, which stopped his heart for five minutes. The resulting cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) resulted in eight broken ribs. He paid $175,000 for a private jet to take him to Los Angeles to get more drugs. When doctors there refused, Perry spent another $175,000 to take a private jet back to Switzerland. In 2022, he estimated that $9 million was spent on his addiction, including 14 stomach surgeries, 15 stays in rehab, and therapy twice a week for 30 years. He believed he had attended 6,000 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
91
Born 1932-07-13. Domain:Science (Physics style). Cause of death:Age
Hubert Reeves CC GOQ was a Canadian astrophysicist and popularizer of science.
86
Born 1937-09-29. Domain:Journalism. Cause of death:Age
Jean-Pierre Elkabbach was a French journalist.
82
Born 1940-10-19. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
Sir Michael John Gambon CBE (/ˈɡæmbɒn/) was an Irish-English actor. Gambon started his acting career with Laurence Olivier as one of the original members of the Royal National Theatre. Over his six-decade-long career, he received three Olivier Awards and four BAFTA TV Awards. In 1998, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to drama. He gained wide recognition through his role of Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter film series from 2004 to 2011, replacing Richard Harris following his death in 2002. Gambon was a qualified private pilot. His love of cars led to his appearance on the BBC series Top Gear. He raced the Suzuki Liana so aggressively that it went around the last corner of his lap on two wheels. The final corner of the Top Gear test track has been named "Gambon Corner" or simply "Gambon" in his honour.
90
Born 1933-09-19. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
David Keith McCallum was a Scottish actor and musician. He gained wide recognition in the 1960s for playing secret agent Illya Kuryakin in the television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. His other notable television roles include Simon Carter in Colditz (1972–1974) and Steel in Sapphire & Steel (1979–1982). Beginning in 2003, McCallum gained renewed international popularity for his role as NCIS medical examiner Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard in the American television series NCIS, which he played for 20 seasons until his death. On film, McCallum notably appeared in The Great Escape (1963). McCallum died at the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City on of natural causes 6 days after his 90th birthday.
81
Born 1941-12-12. Domain:Sport. Cause of death:Age
Noël Tijou was a French long-distance runner. He competed in the men's 10,000 metres at the 1972 Summer Olympics. Tijou died in Les Sables-d'Olonne at the age of 81.
91
Born 1932-04-19. Domain:Art. Cause of death:Pneumonia
Fernando Botero Angulo was a Colombian figurative artist and sculptor from Medellín. His signature style, also known as "Boterismo", depicts people and figures in large, exaggerated volume, which can represent political criticism or humor, depending on the piece. He was considered the most recognized and quoted artist from Latin America in his lifetime, and his art can be found in highly visible places around the world, such as Park Avenue in New York City and the Champs-Élysées in Paris, at different times. Self-styled "the most Colombian of Colombian artists", Botero came to national prominence when he won the first prize at the Salón de Artistas Colombianos in 1958. He began creating sculptures after moving to Paris in 1973, achieving international recognition with exhibitions around the world by the 1990s. His art is collected by many major international museums, corporations, and private collectors. In 2012, he received the International Sculpture Center's Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award
101
Born 1922-05-09. Domain:Science (Math style). Cause of death:Age
Marcel Boiteux was a French economist, mathematician, and senior civil service member. He was the "architect of the French nuclear program" that created 61 nuclear reactors and kept the French electricity sector less carbon-intensive than other European countries (save Iceland).