List of Famous people who are 79

Gerd Schuchardt is an electrical engineer who built his career and reputation in East Germany before 1990 in microprocessor technology and related forward-looking branches of science. He was interested in politics, but had avoided involvement in the country's ruling SED (party) or any of the various the various so-called "bloc parties" which it controlled. In January 1990, with the winds of political change - somewhat implausibly, as many still thought at the time - blowing across from the Kremlin in Moscow, the party leaders in East Berlin no longer felt able to stand against domestic pressures for a return to democratic politics after more than half a century of one-party dictatorship. Gerd Schuchardt became an activist member of the re-awakening Social Democratic Party. After reunification in October 1990 state-level democratic politics returned to Thuringia: Schuchardt became a leading figure in Thuringian state politics, selected by party members as the Social Democratic Party's lead candidate in the 1994 Thuringian state election. He led his party to what turned out to be its best electoral result in Thuringia to date. In the resulting "Grand coalition" government that ensued he served as vice-minister-president until 1999 under the leadership of Bernhard Vogel (CDU) and as Minister for the Sciences, Research and the Arts.

Alexander "Sasha" Abramovich Belavin is a Russian physicist, known for his contributions to string theory.

Anna Seniuk is a Polish actress.

Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez is a Cuban military officer, legislator, and former cosmonaut and the first person of African heritage in space. As a member of the crew of Soyuz 38, he became the first Cuban citizen, the first Latin American, the first person of African descent, and the first person from a country in the Western Hemisphere other than the United States to travel into Earth orbit.

Sir Ian Clark Wood, is a Scottish businessman and philanthropist. He is best known for his work in the North Sea oil industry with Wood Group, which he was largely responsible for transforming from a company of modest size, serving a primarily local market, to a large corporation with operations in over 50 countries. He served as Wood Group's chief executive from 1967 to 2006, and as chairman until 2012. Wood is one of Scotland's wealthiest people, with an estimated net worth of around £2.15 billion (2015).

George Alan Martin Cross FRS is a British molecular parasitologist. He has been André and Bella Meyer Professor of Molecular Parasitology at Rockefeller University since 1982. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1984. He was educated at Cheadle Hulme School and Downing College, Cambridge.

Andreas Stylianou, who was born in 1942, is a former Greek Cypriot football player. Andreas Stylianou joined APOEL in 1963. He won the Greek Cypriot Championship twice. He also won the Greek Cypriot Cup four times and the Cyprus FA Shield once, in 1963. Moreover, he was the top scorer of the Greek Cypriot Championship in 1967 and 1971 and he was pronounced the best football player of the year in Cyprus in 1965 and 1974.

Eliso Virsaladze, is a Soviet and Georgian pianist.