Moustapha Akkad (60), Syrian-born producer of the Halloween movies, killed in a hotel bomb blast in Jordan.
Eddie Albert (99), veteran film and television actor who appeared in RCA/NBC experimental broadcasts before TV was introduced to the public.
Samuel Alderson (90), inventor of the crash test dummy.
Anne Bancroft (73), Oscar-winning actress best remembered as Mrs Robinson in The Graduate.
Ronnie Barker (76), British comedian who was part of The Two Ronnies, with Ronnie Corbett.
Barbara Bel Geddes (82), Miss Ellie in Dallas.
Saul Bellow (89), Nobel Prize-winning author.
Peter Benenson (83), activist and lawyer who founded Amnesty International in 1961.
George Best (59), Britain’s greatest footballer, of complications caused by continued drinking after a liver transplant.
Hans Bethe (99), Nobel Prize-winning physicist who was part of teams that developed both the atomic and the hydrogen bombs.
Giuseppe Caprio (90), Vatican finance chief who served five popes.
Johnny Carson (79), long-time host of The Tonight Show.
Janita Claassen (58), Afrikaans singer, of cancer.
David Philip Clapham (74), South African motorsport stalwart who founded the Car of the Year awards.
Johnnie Cochran (67), US defence lawyer who got OJ Simpson off the hook.
Robin Cook (59), former foreign secretary under Tony Blair, who resigned in 2003 over UK involvement in Iraq, of a heart attack.
John DeLorean (80), car-making entrepreneur whose attempt to take on Detroit ended when he was caught in a cocaine-trafficking sting.
James Doohan (85), Scotty in Star Trek.
K Sello Duiker (31), former commissioning editor at the South African Broadcasting Corporation and prize-winning novelist, took his own life.
Andrea Dworkin (58), anti-porn feminist activist, of cancer.
King Fahd (82), monarch and prime minister of Saudi Arabia
John Fowles (79), author of The Magus and The French Lieutenant’s Woman.
Gopal Vinayak Godse (86), last surviving conspirator in the assas-sination of Mahatma Gandhi.
Gordon Gould (85), physicist whose invention, “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”, is better known by its acronym, laser.
L Patrick Gray (88), FBI director under Richard Nixon.
Prince Rainier Grimaldi (81), ruler of Monaco since 1949.
Peter E Haas (86), grand-nephew of Levi Strauss, who turned a small Western clothing maker into a jeans-making giant.
Cyril Harris (69), South Africa’s chief rabbi emeritus, of cancer.
Enid Haupt (99), publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer and noted philanthropist.
Edward Heath (89), former British prime minister.
Maurice Hilleman (85), microbi-ologist specialising in vaccines, credited with virtually wiping out many deadly childhood diseases.
Shirley Horn (71), jazz legend.
Peter Jennings (67), ABC news anchor, of cancer.
Ba Jin (100), China’s most-acclaimed modern writer.
Georgeanna Seegar Jones (92), pioneer of in-vitro fertilisation.
Brett Kebble (41), colourful mining magnate, gunned down in his car in Johannesburg
Jack Kilby (81), Nobel Prize-winning engineer who invented the integrated circuit and microchip for Texas Instruments, which reduced room-sized computers to pocket-calculator scale.
Lord Patrick Lichfield (66), celebrated royal photographer, of a stroke.
Denis Lindsay (66), South African wicketkeeper of the 1960s, of cancer.
Salvatore Lombino (78), prolific author under the pen names of Evan Hunter and Ed McBain.
Sid Luft (89), producer of A Star Is Born, once married to Judy Garland.
Arthur Maimane (72), controversial Drum journalist, who wrote the long-running detective series The Chief under the pseudonym Arthur Mogale. Became the first full-time black staff member at Reuters and worked for the Mail & Guardian.
Barney Martin (82), Jerry’s dad on Seinfeld.
Selebano Zacharia Matlhape (69), founder of the African National Congress’s economic research unit.
Ernst Mayr (100), evolutionary biologist who defined the concept “species”.
Eugene McCarthy (89), US Democratic senator and stern opponent of the Vietnam War.
Tony Meehan (62), original drummer for the Shadows, of head injuries sustained in a fall.
Ismail Merchant (68), Mumbai-born producer and co-founder of Merchant Ivory films.
Sophie Mgcina (67), award-winning South African actress and musician famed for The Long Journey of Poppie Nongena.
Arthur Miller (89), influential playwright who wrote The Crucible, once married to Marilyn Monroe.
John Mills (97), actor who often portrayed the quintessential British gentleman.
Robert Moog (71), musician and inventor of the Moog synthesizer.
Solomon “Stix” Morewa (61), former South African Football Association president ordered to step down in 1995, of complications related to diabetes.
Pat Morita (73), actor famed for role as teacher in the Karate Kid films.
Philip Morrison (89), astrophysicist and member of the Manhattan Project, who later spoke out strongly against nuclear weapons.
Bo Moseneke (26), Supersport presenter and son of Constitutional Court Judge Dikgang Moseneke, of diabetes-related complications.
Mo Mowlam (56), UK secretary for Northern Ireland, of cancer.
Kocheril Raman Narayanan (85), former Indian president.
Gideon Nieuwoudt (54), former apartheid-era security police colonel, of cancer.
Milton Obote (80), Uganda’s first prime minister.
Rosa Parks (92), US activist, whose refusal to move to the back of a bus sparked the modern civil rights movement.
Graham Payn (87), South African-born singer and actor and long-time companion of Noël Coward.
M Scott Peck (69), psychiatrist who wrote The Road Less Traveled.
Brock Peters (78), ground-breaking black actor who was Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Fritz Philips (100), last member of the family that created the Dutch electronics giant to hold office in the company.
Richard Pryor (65), stand-up comedian, after years of suffering with multiple sclerosis.
Lucy Richardson (47), film art director who, as childhood friend of Julian Lennon’s, was the inspiration behind the Beatles’s hit Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, of cancer.
Judith Rossner (70), author of Looking for Mr Goodbar.
Huberte Rupert (86), wife of South African industrialist Anton and keen promoter of the Afrikaans arts.
Theresa Marie “Terri” Schiavo (41), who had been in a persistent vegetative state since a 1990 heart attack. After a protracted court battle against right-to-lifers and her parents, husband Michael finally won an order to have her feeding tube removed.
Max Schmeling (99), world heavyweight champion during the 1930s, nicknamed “Hitler’s boxer” but who hated the Nazis, best remembered for two fights against Joe Louis.
Elizabeth Sneddon (98), South Africa’s first speech and drama professor.
Leo Sternbach (97), chemist who led development of Librium and Valium.
Gerry Thomas (83), inventor of the TV dinner.
Hunter S Thompson (65), creator of “gonzo journalism”, shot himself. His ashes were sent up over Colorado with fireworks six months after his death.
Andrew Toti (89), prolific inventor of items from pull tabs on cans to the Mae West lifevest.
Mlungisi “Wyckie” Tsotsi (91), Eastern Cape activist who headed the amnesty committee of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission after his return from exile.
Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper (115), world’s oldest person.
Deon van der Walt (47), South African tenor, shot by his father, who later committed suicide.
Luther Vandross (54), soul singer, never completely recovered from a stroke in 2003.
Howard “Sparkle” Watt (94), last surviving member of the 1937 Springbok tour to Australia and New Zealand.
William Westmoreland (91), controversial general in command of US troops in South Vietnam during Vietnam War.
Simon Wiesenthal (96), famed Nazi hunter.
Danny Williams (61), Port Elizabeth-born singer, whose 1961 version of Moon River remains a worldwide favourite.
August Wilson (60), Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who chronicled black American life, of cancer.
Robert Wise (91), Oscar-winning director of West Side Story and The Sound of Music.
Karol Wojtyla (84), who, as Pope John Paul II, became the second-longest serving pontiff after Pius IX.
Zhao Ziyang (85), Chinese leader who attempted democratic reforms and was ousted during the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989.