Deaths in May 2007

The following is a list of notable deaths in May 2007.

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

 * Wiley Harker, 92, American actor (The Straight Story, City Heat, Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead).
 * Temira Pachmuss, 79, Russian-American philologist.
 * Winifred Pennington, 91, British limnologist.
 * Mathilde Octavie Tafna, 112, Guadeloupean oldest living person of a French possession.
 * Fermín Trueba, 92, Spanish road cyclist.

2

 * Maurice Jacob, 74, French theoretical particle physicist.
 * Abdul Sabur Farid Kohistani, 54-55, Afghan legislator and Prime Minister (1992), assassination by gunshot.
 * Brad McGann, 43, New Zealand film director (In My Father's Den), cancer.
 * Juan Valdivieso, 96, Peruvian football goalkeeper and manager, heart failure.

3

 * Alex Agase, 85, Iranian-born American football coach.
 * J. Robert Bradley, 87, American gospel singer, diabetes.
 * Leonard Eron, 87, American psychologist, congestive heart failure.
 * Pat O'Shea, 74, Irish writer.
 * Wally Schirra, 84, American astronaut in Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo projects, heart attack.
 * "Rose Tombe", Sudanese celebrity goat, asphyxiation.
 * Knock Yokoyama, 75, Japanese comedian and politician, throat cancer.
 * Mamadou Zaré, 42, Ivorian footballer.

4

 * Russell W. Kruse, 85, American auctioneer, stroke.
 * Jeremias Nguenha, 35, Mozambican political musician who sang in Shangaan.
 * José Antonio Roca, 78, Mexican football player and manager.
 * Gábor Takács, 47, Hungarian Olympic sprint canoer.

5

 * Prince Abdul-Majid bin Abdul-Aziz, 64-65, Saudi politician, governor of Mecca.
 * José Aponte de la Torre, 65, Puerto Rican mayor, respiratory complications.
 * Tom Hutchinson, 65, American football wide receiver for the Cleveland Browns 1964 NFL champions.
 * Theodore Maiman, 79, American physicist who built the first laser, systemic mastocytosis.
 * Edwin H. Simmons, 85, American Marine Corps historian.
 * Gusti Wolf, 95, Austrian actress.
 * John Zamet, 74, British periodontist.

6

 * Alvin Batiste, 74, American jazz musician, heart attack.
 * Carey Bell, 70, American blues harmonica player, heart failure.
 * Lesley Blanch, 102, British writer and fashion editor.
 * Enéas Carneiro, 68, Brazilian politician, leukemia.
 * Tamás Gábor, 75, Hungarian Olympic fencer.
 * Curtis Harrington, 80, American film director.
 * Kazuo Kitamura, 80, Japanese actor (Tora! Tora! Tora!, Black Rain, Shinobi: Heart Under Blade), pneumonia.
 * Maurice Marsac, 92, French actor (King of Kings, The Jerk, Robert Kennedy and His Times), cardiac arrest.
 * Đorđe Novković, 63, Croatian songwriter.
 * Bernard Weatherill, Baron Weatherill, 86, English Speaker of the British House of Commons (1983–1992), after short illness.

7

 * Isabella Blow, 48, British fashion journalist and stylist, suicide by poisoning.
 * Quentin Brooks, 86, American Olympic shooter.
 * Fulton Burley, 84, Canadian performer, heart failure.
 * Diego Corrales, 29, American world champion boxer, motorcycle accident.
 * Shirl Conway, 90, American actress.
 * George Dawson, 45, British politician, Northern Ireland Assembly member, cancer.
 * Donald Ginsberg, 73, American physicist, melanoma.
 * Tomasi Kulimoetoke II, 88, Wallisian King of Wallis ('Uvea).
 * Raffi Lavie, 70, Israeli artist, pancreatic cancer.
 * Emma Lehmer, 100, Russian-born American mathematician.
 * Sonny Myers, 83, American professional wrestler.
 * Octavian Paler, 81, Romanian writer and journalist, heart attack.
 * Nicholas Worth, 69, American actor (Darkman, Heartbreak Ridge, Night Court), heart failure.
 * Yahweh ben Yahweh, 71, American religious cult leader (Nation of Yahweh) and convicted felon, prostate cancer.

8

 * Mark Burns, 71, English actor (Exodus, House of the Living Dead, By the Sword Divided), cancer.
 * Philip R. Craig, 74, American mystery writer.
 * Velma Dunn, 88, American diver who competed in the 1936 Summer Olympics, stroke.
 * Abdullah al Faisal, 85, Saudi prince, writer and businessman, after long illness.
 * David Farquhar, 79, New Zealand composer.
 * John Henry, 68, British toxicologist, haemorrhage.
 * René Lamps, 91, French politician.
 * Jagdish Narain Sapru, 74, Indian former chairman of ITC Limited and BOC India.
 * Carson Whitsett, 62, American composer, musician and record producer, brain tumor.

9

 * Donald Alexander, 79, Scottish medical researcher.
 * Charlie Ane Jr., 76, American football player (Detroit Lions), pneumonia.
 * Alfred Chandler, 88, American economic historian.
 * Gino Pariani, 79, American soccer player (1950 World Cup), bone cancer.
 * George Seddon, 80, Australian environmental scholar.
 * Dwight Wilson, 106, Canadian centenarian, second-to-last surviving World War I veteran.
 * Philip Workman, 53, American convicted murderer, execution by lethal injection.

10

 * John Lattimer, 92, American urologist who developed a cure for renal tuberculosis.
 * Sir Oliver Millar, 84, British Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures (1972–1988) and Director of the Royal Collection (1987–1988).
 * Robert Oelman, 97, American chief executive of NCR Corporation (1962–1973), co-founder of Wright State University.
 * Chuck Riley, 66, American voice actor.

11

 * Norman Frank, 82, American producer and political strategist.
 * Bernard Gordon, 88, American screenwriter, named on the Hollywood blacklist, cancer.
 * Stanley Holden, 79, British ballet dancer, complications from heart problems and colon cancer.
 * Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe, 71, Nigerian Igbo highlife musician.
 * Malietoa Tanumafili II, 94, Samoan politician, head of state.

12

 * Mullah Dadullah, 41, Afghan militant, Taliban military commander, shot.
 * Teddy Infuhr, 70, American child actor.
 * Kai Johansen, 66, Danish footballer (Greenock Morton F.C. and Rangers), cancer.
 * Henri Klein, 87, French Olympic athlete.
 * Edy Vásquez, 23, Honduran footballer, car accident.

13

 * Alexander Buchanan Campbell, 92, Scottish architect.
 * Chen Xiaoxu, 41, Chinese actress (Dream of the Red Mansion) and Buddhist nun, breast cancer.
 * Mendel Jackson Davis, 64, American politician, U.S. Representative from South Carolina (1971–1981), emphysema.
 * Gomer Hodge, 63, American baseball player (Cleveland Indians), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
 * Luis María Mendía, 82, Argentine naval officer.
 * Kate Webb, 64, New Zealand journalist and foreign correspondent, bowel cancer.

14

 * Orlando Bobo, 33, American-born Canadian football player (Winnipeg Blue Bombers), heart and liver failure.
 * Ülo Jõgi, 86, Estonian anti-communist.
 * Sir Edward Jones, 70, British Army general, Black Rod (1996–2001), heart attack.
 * Nancy McDonald, 72, American politician, member of the Texas House of Representatives (1984–1995), ovarian cancer.
 * Aaron McMillan, 30, Australian classical pianist, bone cancer.
 * Jean Saubert, 65, American dual medalist in slalom (1964 Winter Olympics), breast cancer.
 * Sir Colin St John Wilson, 85, British architect, designer of the British Library.

15

 * Giorgio Cavaglieri, 95, Italian-born American architect, founder of New York City's urban preservation movement.
 * Jerry Falwell, 73, American minister, television evangelist, and conservative activist, founder of the Moral Majority, cardiac arrhythmia.
 * Karen Hess, 88, American culinary historian and author, stroke.
 * Yolanda King, 51, American activist and actress, daughter and first-born child of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
 * Duncan Macrae, 92, British rugby football player, (Scotland Rugby Union Team).
 * Angus McBride, 76, British illustrator.
 * Lauren Terrazzano, 39, American journalist, chronicled her battle with cancer, lung cancer.

16

 * Alphonse "Bois Sec" Ardoin, 91, American creole accordionist.
 * Dame Mary Douglas, 86, British social anthropologist.
 * Gohar Gasparyan, 83, Armenian soprano opera singer.
 * Allan Hird, Sr., 88, Australian footballer and academic, President of Essendon Football Club (1969–1975), Victorian Director-general of Education.
 * Peter Marner, 71, British cricketer, youngest player to represent the Lancashire County Cricket Club.
 * C. Timothy O'Meara, 64, American film editor (The Rose, Hoosiers, Conan the Barbarian).
 * Terry Ryan, 60, American writer (The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio), cancer.

17

 * Lloyd Alexander, 83, American author (The Chronicles of Prydain), cancer.
 * Petro Balabuyev, 76, Ukrainian aircraft designer, including world's largest aeroplane, the An-225.
 * Don Burton, 87, Australian politician, member of the New South Wales Legislative Council (1976–1984).
 * Egmont Foregger, 84, Austrian jurist, official and politician, severe illness.
 * John Gonzaga, 74, American football player with the San Francisco 49ers, Dallas Cowboys, Detroit Lions and Denver Broncos.
 * Kawika Kapahulehua, 76, American captain of the Hokulea's first voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti.
 * Sir John Nicholls, 80, British air marshal.
 * Eugen Weber, 82, Romanian-born American historian, pancreatic cancer.
 * Bill Wight, 85, American MLB pitcher and scout.
 * Wiktor Zin, 82, Polish architect and graphic artist.

18

 * Roy De Forest, 77, American artist and professor at University of California, Davis.
 * Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, 74, French physicist who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1991.
 * Cornelius R. Hager, 93, American educator, President of Asbury University.
 * Saud Memon, 44, Pakistani businessman implicated in the murder of Daniel Pearl, tuberculosis and meningitis.
 * Les Schwab, 89, American tire tycoon.
 * Mika Špiljak, 90, Croatian politician, chairman of the Collective Presidency of Yugoslavia (1983–1984).
 * Yoyoy Villame, 69, Filipino musician and comedian, heart attack.

19

 * Derek Cooper, 94, British army officer and refugee campaigner.
 * Miroslav Deronjić, 52, Bosnian Serb politician and convicted war criminal, natural causes.
 * Willie Ferguson, 67, South African racing driver.
 * Jack Findlay, 72, Australian Grand Prix motorcycle racer.
 * Frank Guida, 84, Italian-born American record producer.
 * Ron Hall, 43, American football player (Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Detroit Lions).
 * Marian Radke-Yarrow, 89, American researcher in child psychology, leukemia.
 * Scott Thorkelson, 49, Canadian member of the House of Commons (1988–1993), heart attack.
 * Michel Visi, 52, Vanuatuan Catholic bishop.
 * Hans Wollschläger, 72, German author and translator.
 * Carl Wright, 75, American actor (Big Momma's House, Barbershop, Soul Food), cancer.

20

 * Bobby Ash, 82, British-born Canadian television host (The Uncle Bobby Show), heart attack.
 * Dame Jean Herbison, 84, New Zealand academic, first N.Z. female chancellor (University of Canterbury, 1979–1984).
 * Baruch Kimmerling, 67, Israeli sociologist and historian.
 * Valentina Leontyeva, 84, Russian television presenter, one of the first television presenters in the Soviet Union.
 * Sir George Macfarlane, 91, British scientist and engineer.
 * Tod H. Mikuriya, 73, American psychiatrist and medical marijuana advocate, cancer.
 * Stanley Miller, 77, American chemist and biologist, known for the Miller–Urey experiment into the origins of life, heart failure.
 * William Peters, 85, American journalist and documentarian of race issues, Alzheimer's disease.
 * Guram Sharadze, 66, Georgian philologist and politician, shot.
 * Norman Von Nida, 93, Australian golfer.
 * Ben Weisman, 85, American musician and songwriter, wrote nearly 60 songs for singer Elvis Presley, stroke.

21

 * Clark Adams, 37, American secular humanist leader and activist.
 * Frank Gay, 86, American businessman, senior corporate aide to Howard Hughes.
 * Peter Hayes, 58, Australian lawyer.
 * María Hortensia de Herrera de Lacalle, 98, Uruguayan politician, mother of ex-President Luis Alberto Lacalle.
 * Bruno Mattei, 75, Italian film director.
 * Kenneth Sokoloff, 54, American economist who examined factor endowment, liver cancer.
 * Sakorn Yang-keawsot, 85, Thai puppeteer, lung illness.

22

 * Fannie Lee Chaney, 84, American civil rights activist.
 * Frank E. Maestrone, 84, American diplomat, ambassador to Kuwait (1976–1979), infection.
 * Jef Planckaert, 73, Belgian cyclist.
 * Pemba Doma Sherpa, 36, Nepali mountaineer, two-time summiter of Mt. Everest, fall from Lhotse.
 * Art Stevens, 92, American animator, film director and screenwriter (The Fox and the Hound, The Rescuers, The Black Cauldron), heart attack.

23

 * Clyde Robert Bulla, 93, American children's author.
 * Dick Humbert, 88, American gridiron football player.
 * Kei Kumai, 76, Japanese film director, brain hemorrhage.
 * Tron Øgrim, 59, Norwegian author and politician.
 * Åke Sundborg, 85, Swedish geographer and geomorphologist.

24

 * Buddy Childers, 81, American jazz trumpeter, cancer.
 * Les Harmer, 86, New Zealand cricket umpire.
 * Bill Johnston, 85, Australian cricketer, member of the 1948 Invincibles.
 * Philip Mayer Kaiser, 93, American diplomat, ambassador to Senegal and Mauritania, Hungary, and Austria, pneumonia.
 * Norm Maleng, 68, American prosecutor (King County, Washington), cardiac arrest.
 * Christopher Newton, 37, American convicted murderer, execution by lethal injection.
 * Minako Oba, 77, Japanese author.
 * David Renton, Baron Renton, 98, British politician and aristocrat, oldest peer in the House of Lords.

25

 * Arwon, 33, New Zealand-born racehorse, longest surviving Melbourne Cup winner, euthanasia.
 * Laurie Bartram, 49, American actress (Friday the 13th) and ballet dancer, pancreatic cancer.
 * Victor Firea, 84, Romanian Olympic athlete.
 * Charles Nelson Reilly, 76, American actor (How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, The Ghost & Mrs. Muir, All Dogs Go to Heaven), Tony winner (1962), complications from pneumonia.
 * Kaspar Schiesser, 91, Swiss Olympic runner.
 * Sun Yuanliang, 103, Chinese-born General with the Kuomintang, exiled in Taiwan.
 * Bartholomew Ulufa'alu, 56, Solomon Islander politician, Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands (1997–2000), after long illness.

26

 * Sir James Baird, 92, British army general.
 * James Beck, 77, American art historian, founder of ArtWatch International,.
 * Gene Gibson, 82, American basketball player and coach (Texas Tech University), complications from surgery.
 * Marek Krejčí, 26, Slovak footballer, car accident.
 * Phyllis Sellick, 95, British pianist.
 * Aubrey Singer, 80, British television executive, head of BBC Two (1974–1978).
 * Khalil al-Zahawi, 60-61, Iraqi calligrapher, shot.

27

 * Ron Archer, 73, Australian Test cricketer, lung cancer.
 * Edward Behr, 81, British journalist and author.
 * Sam Garrison, 65, American lawyer, defended President Richard Nixon in impeachment hearings in 1974, leukemia.
 * Marquise Hill, 24, American football player (New England Patriots), drowning.
 * Jack Kerr, 96, New Zealand cricket player, Chairman and President of New Zealand Cricket.
 * Wiley Mayne, 90, American politician, U.S. Representative from Iowa (1966–1974), cardiopulmonary incident.
 * Howard Porter, 58, American basketball player (Bulls, Knicks, Pistons), injuries sustained from beating.
 * Izumi Sakai, 40, Japanese singer (Zard), cerebral contusion.
 * Percy Sonn, 57, South African cricket player, President of the International Cricket Council, complications after surgery.
 * Gretchen Wyler, 75, American actress (Private Benjamin, Dallas, The Devil's Brigade) and animal rights activist, complications from breast cancer.
 * Ed Yost, 87, American inventor of the modern hot air balloon.

28

 * Barbara Cox Anthony, 84, American heiress, after long illness.
 * Harold C. Helgeson, 75, American geochemist, lung cancer.
 * Jörg Immendorff, 61, German painter, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
 * Phyllis Koehn, 84, American baseball player (All-American Girls Professional Baseball League).
 * David Lane, 68, American white supremacist leader and author.
 * John Macquarrie, 87, British theologian, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford (1970–1986).
 * Toshikatsu Matsuoka, 62, Japanese politician, Minister of Agriculture, suicide by hanging.
 * Parren Mitchell, 85, American politician, U.S. Representative from Maryland (1971–1987), co-founder of Congressional Black Caucus, pneumonia.
 * Ethel Mutharika, 63, Zimbabwe-born First Lady of Malawi, cancer.

29

 * Dave Balon, 68, Canadian ice hockey player, multiple sclerosis.
 * Tony Bastable, 62, British television presenter (Magpie), DJ and independent producer, pneumonia.
 * Dame Lois Browne-Evans, 79, Bermudian politician.
 * Donald Johanos, 79, American conductor.
 * Norman Kaye, 80, Australian actor and musician, Alzheimer's disease.
 * Posteal Laskey Jr., 69, American convicted murderer, commonly believed to be the serial killer called the "Cincinnati Strangler".
 * Tahir Mirza, 70, Pakistani journalist and former editor of Dawn, lung cancer.
 * Folole Muliaga, 44, Samoan–NZ teacher whose oxygen machine failed after power cut for unpaid account, heart and lung disease.
 * Michael Seaton, 84, British astronomer and physicist.
 * Wallace Seawell, 90, American photographer and filmmaker, age-related causes.
 * John Stanning junior, 87, English cricketer.

30

 * Jean-Claude Brialy, 74, French actor and director, cancer.
 * Kieran Carey, 74, Irish hurler.
 * Mark Harris, 84, American author (Bang the Drum Slowly), Alzheimer's disease.
 * Preston Martin, 83, American banker, Deputy Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board (1982–1986), cancer.
 * William Morris Meredith, Jr., 88, American poet and Pulitzer Prize winner.
 * Yevgeni Mishakov, 66, Russian ice hockey player.

31

 * George Bragg, 81, American conductor and founder of the Texas Boys Choir.
 * Norman Fletcher, 89, American architect.
 * Clifford Scott Green, 84, American jurist, Federal Court judge.
 * David J. Lawson, 77, American minister, bishop of the United Methodist Church, after long illness.
 * Fathia Nkrumah, 75, Egyptian–born Ghanaian First Lady, after long illness.
 * Charles Remington, 85, American zoologist, known for studies of butterflies and moths.
 * Alexander Tubelsky, 66, Russian academic, President of Association of Democratic Schools, stroke.
 * Jim Williams, 92, American basketball coach (Colorado State University).