List of Famous people who are 79

Robert Lee Allen is an American activist, writer, and Adjunct Professor of African-American Studies and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Allen received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, San Francisco, and previously taught at San José State University and Mills College. He was Senior Editor of The Black Scholar: Journal of Black Studies and Research, published quarterly or more frequently in Oakland, California, by the Black World Foundation since 1969.

Carol Bellamy is an American nonprofit executive and former politician. She is chair of the board of the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF). Previously, she was director of the Peace Corps, executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and president and CEO of World Learning. She is also the chair of children's rights advocacy organization ECPAT International, working to end the sexual exploitation of children. After three terms in the New York State Senate, she was the first woman to be elected to any citywide office in NYC as President of the New York City Council, a position she held until her unsuccessful bid for Mayor of New York in 1985; she was the second to last person to hold this position.

John Crowley is an American author of fantasy, science fiction and historical fiction. He has also written essays. Crowley studied at Indiana University and has a second career as a documentary film writer.

John Elmer Blaha is a retired United States Air Force colonel and a former NASA astronaut. He is a veteran of five space missions aboard the Space Shuttle and Mir.

Ib Henning Madsen is a Danish mathematician, a professor of mathematics at the University of Copenhagen. He is known for proving the Mumford conjecture on the cohomology of the stable mapping class group, and for developing topological cyclic homology theory.