Deaths in December 2001

The following is a list of notable deaths in December 2001.

Entries for each day are listed alphabetically by surname. A typical entry lists information in the following sequence:
 * Name, age, country of citizenship at birth, subsequent country of citizenship (if applicable), reason for notability, cause of death (if known), and reference.

1

 * Danilo Donati, 75, Italian costume designer and production designer (two-time winner of the Academy Award for Best Costume Design).
 * Ellis R. Dungan, 92, American film director.
 * Michael Gallanagh, 82, Irish Fianna Fáil politician and Army captain.
 * Cor de Jager, 76, Dutch army officer, Chief of Defence (1980-1983).
 * Lin Haiyin, 83, Taiwanese writer, organ dysfunction.
 * Celia M. Hunter, 82, American environmentalist and conservationist.
 * Chris Rees, 70, Welsh politician.
 * Pavel Sadyrin, 59, Soviet and Russian football player and manager, cancer.

2

 * John W. Collins, 89, American chess master, author and teacher.
 * Chase Craig, 91, American comic strip and comic book writer and cartoonist, fall.
 * Bruce Halford, 70, British racing driver.
 * Martha Kneale, 92, British philosopher.
 * Roger McDonough, 92, American librarian.
 * Amir Abdullah Khan Rokhri, 85, Pakistani politician.
 * Max Rood, 74, Dutch jurist and politician.
 * Naomi Schor, 58, American literary critic and theorist, brain hemorrhage.
 * Manuel Velasco Suárez, 86, Mexican neurologist, scientist and humanist.
 * Dmitri Voskoboynikov, 60, Russian Olympic volleyball player.
 * Willie Woodburn, 82, Scottish footballer.

3

 * Juan José Arreola, 83, Mexican writer, academic, and actor.
 * Dee Barton, 64, American jazz trombonist, big band drummer and composer.
 * Marike de Klerk, 64, First Lady of South Africa, as wife of President Frederik Willem de Klerk, murdered.
 * Anthony Gigliotti, 79, American clarinetist and music teacher (Philadelphia Orchestra).
 * Nebojša M. Krstić, 37, Serbian theologian and sociologist, car accident.
 * Grady Martin, 72, American country music guitarist (The Nashville A-Team), heart attack.
 * Gerhart M Riegner, 90, German philosopher, and the secretary-general of the World Jewish Congress from 1965 to 1983.
 * Harry Winter, 87, Austrian singer.

4

 * Silvio Clementelli, 75, Italian film producer.
 * Pierre de Bénouville, 87, French Army officer, member of the Resistance during World War II, and politician.
 * Mercedes Matter, 87/88, American painter, draughtswoman, and writer.
 * Eddie Popowski, 88, American baseball coach and manager.
 * Princess Maria Francesca of Savoy, 86, Italian royal and daughter of Victor Emmanuel III of Italy.
 * John Townsend, 85, American basketball player.
 * Ed Whalen, 74, Canadian television personality and journalist, heart attack.

5

 * Anton Benya, 89, Austrian politician and trade unionist.
 * Peter Blake, 53, New Zealand sailor and environmentalist, shot.
 * Muhamed Kreševljaković, 62, Bosnian politician and Mayor of Sarajevo.
 * Franco Rasetti, 100, Italian-American physicist.
 * Bill Roberts, 89, British athlete.
 * Dharam Singh, 82, Indian field hockey player and Olympic champion.
 * Tomás Vio, 80, Argentine basketball player.

6

 * Colin Buchanan, 94, Scottish town planner.
 * Robert W. Camac, 61, American thoroughbred horse racing trainer and breeder, murdered.
 * Thomas William Gould, 86, English Royal Navy submariner and World War II hero (Victoria Cross).
 * Charles McClendon, 78, American football player (University of Kentucky) and coach (Louisiana State University).
 * Walt Mulconery, 69, American film editor (Flashdance, The Karate Kid, Touch and Go).

7

 * David Astor, 89, British newspaper proprietor.
 * Eva Calvo, 80, Mexican actress.
 * Wally Cruice, 88, American NFL football player, assistant coach, and scout.
 * James Crutchfield, 89, American blues singer, piano player and songwriter, heart disease.
 * Peter Elias, 78, American information theorist, Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease.
 * Faith Hubley, 77, American animator (Moonbird, The Hole, Sesame Street, A Doonesbury Special), breast cancer.
 * Billie Matthews, 71, American gridiron football coach.
 * Subrata Mitra, 70, Indian cinematographer.
 * Pauline Moore, 87, American actress (Heidi, The Three Musketeers, Young Mr. Lincoln, Charlie Chan at Treasure Island), ALS.
 * Ray Powell, 73, British politician.

8

 * Agha Shahid Ali, 52, Kashmiri-American poet, brain cancer.
 * Mirza Delibašić, 47, Bosnian and Yugoslav basketball player and coach.
 * Maurice Gross, 67, French linguist and scholar.
 * Betty Holberton, 84, American computer programmer, one of six original programmers of the ENIAC computer.
 * Pete Perreault, 62, American gridiron football player.
 * Sergei Suponev, 38, Soviet/Russian television director and children's television presenter, snowmobile accident.
 * Miroslav Vlach, 66, Czech ice hockey player and Olympic medalist.
 * George Young, 71, American football executive.

9

 * Cesina Bermudes, 93, Portuguese obstetrician and feminist.
 * Michael Carver, Baron Carver, 86, British Field Marshal.
 * Joseph Mees, 78, Belgian prelate of the Catholic Church.
 * Frederick Stewart, 85, British geologist.
 * Lisa Welander, 92, Swedish neurologist.

10

 * Mikhail Budyko, 81, Russian climatologist.
 * Gus Doerner, 79, American basketball player.
 * Alan Fennell, 65, British writer and editor.
 * Knut Fægri, 92, Norwegian botanist and palaeoecologist.
 * Ashok Kumar, 90, Indian film actor, heart failure.
 * Vernon Richards, 86, Anglo-Italian anarchist, author, and photographer.
 * Heinz Rögner, 72, German conductor.

11

 * Beverly Hope Atkinson, 66, American actress, cancer.
 * Andrei Bantikov, 87, Russian and Soviet painter.
 * Graham Billing, 65, New Zealand novelist, journalist and poet.
 * Mainza Chona, 71, Zambian politician and diplomat, kidney failure.
 * Ramchandra Narayan Dandekar, 92, Indian indologist and scholar.
 * Zdeněk Dítě, 81, Czechoslovak film actor.
 * Teguh Karya, 64, Indonesian film director, complications from a stroke.
 * Clark Mills, 86, American boatbuilder and designer.
 * John Wilkinson Taylor, 95, American academic and UNESCO director-general.

12

 * Friedel Apelt, 99, German political activist and trades union official.
 * Josef Bican, 88, Austrian-Czech footballer.
 * Ardito Desio, 104, Italian explorer, geologist, and cartographer.
 * Berit Granquist, 92, Swedish Olympic fencer (women's foil at the 1936 Summer Olympics).
 * Armando Theodoro Hunziker, 82, Argentine botanist (Botanical Museum of the National University of Córdoba), cancer.
 * Farnham Johnson, 77, American gridiron football player (Chicago Rockets).
 * Lê Phổ, 94, Vietnamese painter.
 * Giuseppe Prisco, 80, Italian lawyer and sporting director.
 * Jean Richard, 80, French actor, comedian, and circus entrepreneur, cancer.
 * Roger Scotti, 76, French football player.
 * U. S. Grant Sharp, Jr., 95, United States Navy admiral.
 * William Stobie, 51, Northern Irish paramilitary, shot.

13

 * Michael Bradshaw, 68, English actor.
 * Larry Costello, 70, American basketball player and coach, cancer.
 * Yvan Craipeau, 90, French Trotskyist.
 * Jack Hoffman, 71, American gridiron football player (Xavier University, Chicago Bears).
 * György Kőszegi, 51, Hungarian weightlifter and Olympic silver medalist.
 * Nigel Lovell, 85, Australian actor and opera director.
 * Beatrice Macola, 36, Italian actress, cerebral infarction.
 * Vidadi Narimanbekov, 75, Azerbaijani painter.
 * Chuck Schuldiner, 34, American death metal guitarist, vocalist and songwriter, brain cancer.
 * Dušan Slobodník, 74, Slovak literary theoretician, translator and politician.

14

 * Conte Candoli, 74, American jazz trumpeter, prostate cancer.
 * Arghiri Emmanuel, 90, French marxian economist.
 * Alfred Byrd Graf, 100, German-American botanist, photographer and author.
 * John Guedel, 88, American radio and television producer (You Bet Your Life, People Are Funny, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet).
 * Pauline Mills McGibbon, 91, Canadian politician, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario.
 * Claude Santelli, 78, French film director and screenwriter.
 * W. G. Sebald, 57, German writer, car collision.
 * Eoin Ryan, Snr, 81, Irish politician and senator.

15

 * Wilkie Cooper, 90, British cinematographer (Jason and the Argonaut).
 * Russ Haas, 27, American professional wrestler, heart failure.
 * Bianca Halstead, 36, American hard rock singer, car collision.
 * Franciszek Kępka, 61, Polish glider pilot and European champion.
 * José O'Callaghan Martínez, 79, Spanish Jesuit priest and biblical scholar.
 * Rufus Thomas, 84, American R&B/soul singer, heart failure.

16

 * Stuart Adamson, 43, Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist of Big Country and The Raphaels, suicide by hanging.
 * Roy Brocksmith, 56, American actor, diabetes.
 * Stefan Heym, 88, German writer, heart failure.
 * Martin Isaksson, 80, Finnish politician and diplomat.
 * Carwood Lipton, 81, American soldier during World War II and member of the Band of Brothers.
 * Lester Persky, 76, American film, television, and theatre producer, complications following heart surgery.
 * Villy Sørensen, 72, Danish writer, philosopher and literary critic.
 * Lincoln Tate, 67, American actor and marine.

17

 * Mohammad al-Husayni al-Shirazi, 73, Iranian-Iraqi Shia marja' and political theorist.
 * Gerald Ashby, 52, English football referee, heart attack.
 * Luigi Bertoldi, 81, Italian socialist politician.
 * Fred Chaney, Sr., 87, Australian politician.
 * Nelson Chelle, 70, Uruguayan basketball player.
 * Frédéric de Pasquale, 70, French actor.
 * Martin Glaberman, 83, American marxist writer, historian, and academic.
 * Martha Mödl, 89, German soprano, and later mezzo-soprano.
 * Wale Ogunyemi, 62, Nigerian dramatist, film actor, and playwright.
 * Aleksandr Volodin, 82, Soviet and Russian playwright, screenwriter and poet.
 * Alf Wood, 86, English football goalkeeper and manager.

18

 * Gilbert Bécaud, 74, French singer, composer ("What Now My Love"), pianist and actor, lung cancer.
 * Dan DeCarlo, 82, American cartoonist (Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Josie and the Pussycats, Cheryl Blossom), pneumonia.
 * Dimitris Dragatakis, 87, Greek classical music composer.
 * Mary Hardwick, 88, English tennis player.
 * Bill Howerton, 80, American baseball player.
 * Kira Ivanova, 38, Soviet Olympic figure skater (bronze medal winner in women's figure skating at the 1984 Winter Olympics), homicide.
 * Jim Letherer, 67, American civil rights activist.
 * Marcel Mule, 100, French saxophonist.
 * Tolomush Okeyev, 66, Kyrgyz screenwriter and film director.
 * Amal Kumar Sarkar, 100, Indian judge and Chief Justice.
 * Fyodor Shutkov, 77, Russian sailor.
 * Marcelle Tassencourt, 87, French actress and theatre director.
 * Cecil Waidyaratne, 63, Sri Lankan general.
 * Clifford T. Ward, 57, English singer-songwriter, pneumonia.

19

 * Susheela Gopalan, 71, Indian communist leader and politician.
 * Christine Kittrell, 72, American R&B singer, emphysema.
 * Wang Ruowang, 83, Chinese author and dissident, lung cancer.
 * Julia Sánchez, 71, Peruvian track and field sprinter.
 * Hans Warren, 80, Dutch writer, liver problems.
 * Dale Waters, 92, American football player.
 * Jakob Weidemann, 78, Norwegian artist.
 * Arkie Whiteley, 37, Australian actress (A Town Like Alice, Mad Max 2, Princess Caraboo), adrenal cancer.
 * Kiyoji Ōtsuji, 78, Japanese photographer, photography theorist, and educator.

20

 * Manuhuia Bennett, 85, New Zealand anglican prelate.
 * Foster Brooks, 89, American actor and comedian, heart failure.
 * Edward Evans, 87, English film and television actor (The Grove Family, Coronation Street, Z-Cars).
 * Kōji Nanbara, 74, Japanese actor, heart attack.
 * Léopold Sédar Senghor, 95, Senegalese politician and poet, President (1960 -1980).
 * Joan Wheeler, 88, American actress.

21

 * Heinz Macher, 81, German Waffen-SS member and Nazi official during World War II.
 * Kevin Manser, 72, Australian actor, cancer.
 * Jacques Mauclair, 82, French film actor.
 * Ed Salem, 73, American gridiron football player, complications from diabetes.
 * Dick Schaap, 67, American sportswriter, broadcaster, and author.
 * Thomas Sebeok, 81, Hungarian-American polymath, semiotician, and linguist.
 * Leonid Smirnov, 85, Soviet statesman.
 * Namık Kemal Yolga, 87, Turkish diplomat and statesman.
 * Vladimir Zherikhin, 56, Soviet/Russian paleoentomologist and coleopterist.

22

 * Grzegorz Ciechowski, 44, Polish rock musician (Republika) and film music composer, heart attack after surgery.
 * Bob Davis, 68, American baseball player.
 * Angèle Durand, 76, Belgian singer and actress.
 * Lance Fuller, 73, American actor.
 * Jovan Gojković, 26, Serbian football player, traffic collision.
 * Shidzue Katō, 104, Japanese feminist and politician.
 * Jan Kott, 87, Polish theatre critic and political activist, heart attack.
 * Lance Loud, 50, American television personality and magazine columnist, liver failure as a result of hepatitis C.
 * Jacques Mayol, 74, French diver and holder of many records in free diving, suicide.
 * Gene Taylor, 72, American jazz double bassist.
 * Liu Zihou, 92, Chinese politician, governor of Hubei and Hebei.

23

 * Mark Clinton, 86, Irish Fine Gael politician.
 * Vicente Gómez, 90, Spanish guitarist and composer.
 * Bola Ige, 71, Nigerian lawyer and politician (Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Nigeria), homicide.
 * Dimitri Obolensky, 83, Russian-born British historian.
 * Pedro Richards, 45, English footballer, pneumonia.
 * Donald C. Spencer, 89, American mathematician,.
 * Jelle Zijlstra, 83, Dutch politician and economist, Prime Minister (1966-1967), dementia.

24

 * Doug Adam, 78, Canadian ice hockey player and coach.
 * Hiroshi Kuroki, 94, Japanese politician and governor of Miyazaki Prefecture, pneumonia.
 * Robert Leckie, 81, United States Marine and author, Alzheimer's disease.
 * Harvey Martin, 51, American gridiron football player, pancreatic cancer.
 * Hank Soar, 87, American gridiron football player.
 * Gareth Williams, 48, British musician (This Heat), cancer.

25

 * Mike Davis, 45, American professional wrestler, heart attack.
 * Bryan Drake, 76, New Zealand operatic baritone.
 * Andrew J. Evans Jr., 83, American air force officer and flying ace.
 * Ramón García, 77, Cuban baseball player.
 * Alfred A. Tomatis, 81, French otolaryngologist and inventor.
 * Billy Wells, 70, American football player.

26

 * Jacques Cauvin, French archaeologist.
 * Edward Downes, 90, American musicologist, radio personality, and music critic.
 * Nigel Hawthorne, 72, British actor (The Madness of King George, Yes Minister, Tarzan), pancreatic cancer, heart attack.
 * Paul Landres, 89, American film and television editor and director, cancer.
 * Tom McBride, 87, American baseball player.
 * George Rochester, 93, British physicist, heart failure.

27

 * Momčilo Cemović, 73, Montenegrin politician.
 * Pete D'Alonzo, 72, American gridiron football player.
 * Robert Fowler, 70, South African cyclist (silver medal winner of the men's cycling team pursuit at the 1952 Summer Olympics).
 * Ian Hamilton, 63, British critic, poet, magazine publisher, cancer.
 * John Hoffman, 58, American baseball player.
 * Paul Hogarth, 84, British artist.
 * Boris Rybakov, 83, Russian historian.
 * Helen Rodríguez Trías, 72, American pediatrician and women's rights activist, cancer.

28

 * Frankie Gaye, 60, American soul musician and brother of Marvin Gaye, heart attack.
 * T. R. Govindachari, 86, Indian chemist and academic.
 * Hovie Lister, 75, American gospel singer and manager of The Statesmen Quartet.
 * Arne Rettedal, 75, Norwegian politician.
 * Anthony Royle, Baron Fanshawe of Richmond, 74, British politician and businessman.
 * Sam Solon, 70, American politician, malignant melanoma.
 * Gerard van Leijenhorst, 73, Dutch politician and chemist.

29

 * Tom Bourke, 83, Australian rugby player.
 * Cássia Eller, 39, Brazilian singer and musician, heart attack.
 * Florian Fricke, 57, German musician, stroke.
 * György Kepes, 95, Hungarian-American painter, photographer, designer, and art theorist.
 * Anatoly Kubatsky, 93, Soviet/Russian actor.
 * Clinton D. McKinnon, 95, American politician and journalist.
 * Josef Věntus, 70, Czech rower ad Olympic medalist.
 * Louis Waltniel, 76, Belgian politician and industrialist.

30

 * Eric Cheney, 77, British motorcycle designer.
 * Chaim Kreiswirth, 83, Belgian orthodox rabbi.
 * Samuel Mockbee, 57, American architect, leukemia.
 * Ray Patterson, 90, American animator (The Smurfs, Dumbo, Challenge of the GoBots).
 * Sheila Sherlock, 83, British physician, pulmonary fibrosis.
 * Ralph Sutton, 79, American jazz pianist, stroke.
 * Vladislav Čáp, 75, Czech figure skater.

31

 * Mathew H. Ahmann, 70, American Catholic layman and civil rights activist, cancer.
 * John Grigg, 2nd Baron Altrincham, 77, British writer, historian and politician.
 * Guido di Tella, 70, Argentine businessman, academic and diplomat, cerebral hemorrhage.
 * Eileen Heckart, 82, American actress (Butterflies Are Free, The Bad Seed, The First Wives Club), Oscar winner (1973), lung cancer.
 * Paul Hubschmid, 84, Swiss actor (Funeral in Berlin, My Fair Lady, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms), pulmonary embolism.
 * Harshad Mehta, 47, Indian stockbroker and fraudster.
 * Bernie Purcell, 73, Australian rugby player and coach.
 * T. M. Chidambara Ragunathan, 78, Tamil, writer, journalist and literary critic.
 * David Swift, 82, American screenwriter and film director (How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, The Parent Trap, Pollyanna), heart failure.