Famous People Who Died Today

Social reformer and abolitionist, Frederick Douglass was a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York. Born into slavery, he had a difficult early life. Eventually, he managed to escape and dedicated the rest of his life to promoting the cause of abolition. He was a great orator and writer.

Hunter S. Thompson was an American author and journalist. He is credited with creating his own subgenre of New Journalism called the gonzo journalism. The author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which was later adapted into a film, Thompson was famous for his lifelong use of drugs and alcohol. His books have had a major impact on counterculture.

Actor Dick York is best remembered for his role as Darrin Stephens in the ABC fantasy sitcom Bewitched. He began his career as a teenager by starring in a radio show. He became immensely popular as a radio actor and ventured into films and TV shows as well. In his later years, he founded a charity to help the homeless.

Born to a farmer, Ferruccio Lamborghini started fiddling with his father’s tractors and was soon able to make full tractors out of scratch. He gradually created an auto empire named after him that is world-renowned for its luxury sports cars and SUVs. He retired to devote himself to winemaking later.

Chester W. Nimitz was part of the United States Navy where he served as a fleet admiral. He played a key role during World War II, commanding the US Pacific Fleet and the Allied air, sea, and land forces. He also played a crucial role in acquiring approval to develop USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine in the world.

US naval officer Robert Peary is credited with discovering the North Pole, with explorer Matthew Henson as his attendant, though he was challenged by Frederick A. Cook, who claimed to have achieved the feat independently before him. Later, diary entries revealed Peary may have been 100km short of the pole.

Born to an English father in Australia, Percy Grainger was raised by his mother after their parents’ split. Mostly homeschooled after being bullied by his batchmates, he developed a love for music and debuted as a pianist at 10. He revived English folk music and set up the Grainger Museum.

A pioneer of molecular biology, Oswald Avery revolutionized science with his research on the chemical processes involved in immunology. The Canadian-American bacteriologist initially aspired to be a musician. He later proved that DNA was the basis of heredity. Though nominated for the Nobel Prize multiple times, he never won it.

Polish-American Gestalt psychologist Solomon Asch, a pioneer in social psychology, is known for his seminal work in social psychology, including social influence, impression formation, conformity and prestige suggestion. He is noted for the Asch conformity experiments or the Asch paradigm, a series of studies in which he demonstrated the influence of group pressure on opinions.  

Washakie was an influential leader of the Shoshone people, a Native American tribe. He was recognized as the head of the Eastern Shoshones for a major part of his life by the representatives of the US government. He was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners in 1979.

Paul Marcinkus was an American religious leader best remembered for his service as the archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church. From 1971 to 1989, he also served as the president of the Vatican Bank. One of the most controversial archbishops of the 20th century, Marcinkus' life and career inspired many film characters, including Archbishop Gilday in The Godfather Part III.  

Austro-Hungarian journalist Leopold Weiss was a descendant of rabbis and ran away from home in his teens, taking up odd jobs, before finally becoming a journalist in Germany. His work took him to the Middle East, where he converted to Islam and adopted the name Muhammad Asad.

Henri Moissan was a French chemist and pharmacist. He is best known for his work in isolating fluorine from its compounds, an achievement that earned him the 1906 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He was one of the original members of the International Atomic Weights Committee. He also made significant contributions to the production of artificial diamonds.

René Cassin was a French jurist best known for co-authoring the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to be adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. For this contribution, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1968. The same year, he also received one of the UN General Assembly's Human Rights Prizes. The René Cassin Award is named in his honor. 

Spanish Baroque dramatist, poet and Roman Catholic monk Tirso de Molina is best known for writing the play The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest which first introduced the legendary fictional character of Don Juan. Other notable works of Molina includes the comedy sitcom Don Gil of the green tights and the trilogy of The Santa Juana.

Known as Bolognese Minerva, Laura Bassi became the first woman physics professor to have taught at a European university, when she started teaching at the University of Bologna. A child prodigy, she excelled in Latin and math at age 5. She was also the first lady with a doctorate in science.

René Dubos was a French-American experimental pathologist, microbiologist, humanist, environmentalist, and writer. He is best remembered for his literary work, So Human An Animal, which earned him the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. René Dubos is credited with popularizing the phrase, Think globally, act locally.

Waldo R. Tobler was an American-Swiss cartographer and geographer. He is best remembered for proposing the first and the second law of geography. Waldo R. Tobler is also remembered for his association with the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, where he was a senior scientist and one of the main investigators.

Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet, who founded the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, is remembered chiefly because of his renditions of various French and Russian composers of the 20th century. Unknown to many, he initially taught math at the University of Lausanne. He has also penned books on music.

Matilde Hidalgo was an Ecuadorian poet, physician, and activist. The first Ecuadorian woman to exercise suffrage, Hidalgo fought for women's rights throughout her life. Today, Matilde Hidalgo is recognized as one of the most prominent women in Ecuadorian history.

Over his illustrious career of almost 2 decades, Hungarian conductor Ferenc Fricsay became one of the greatest conductors of his time. After studying scores of instruments such as the piano, violin, and clarinet, he had started conducting at age 15. Mozart’s The Magic Flute remains his best-known recording.