List of Famous people who died at 46

Thomas Hartwig Wolff was a noted mathematician, working primarily in the fields of harmonic analysis, complex analysis, and partial differential equations. As an undergraduate at Harvard University he regularly played poker with his classmate Bill Gates. While a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley from 1976 to 1979, under the direction of Donald Sarason, he obtained a new proof of the corona theorem, a famously difficult theorem in complex analysis. He was made Professor of Mathematics at Caltech in 1986, and was there from 1988–1992 and from 1995 to his death in a car accident in 2000. He also held positions at the University of Washington, University of Chicago, New York University, and University of California, Berkeley.

Philip William Seamen was an English jazz drummer.

Zheng Cao was a Chinese-born, American operatic mezzo-soprano known for her signature role of Suzuki in Madama Butterfly. She performed this role with opera companies such as San Francisco Opera, Grand Théâtre de Genève, Pittsburgh Opera, Vancouver Opera, Washington National Opera, San Diego Opera, and under the baton of Seiji Ozawa with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Her portrayal of the role of Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro also earned her recognition at several American opera companies, including San Francisco Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, and Houston Grand Opera. She died from lung cancer in San Francisco, California in 2013.

Gerald Eugene Stano was an American convicted serial killer. He killed at least 22 women, and confessed to killing 41.

Claude Louise Batho was a French photographer. She is remembered for the detailed images of her home and for her series on Claude Monet's garden at Giverny.

Hermann Burger, was a Swiss poet, novelist and essayist. In his creative works Burger often focused on society's lonely outsiders and, increasingly, the inevitability of death. His virtuosity in applying literary styles and use of thorough research are significant features of many of his publications.

David McDowell Brown was a United States Navy captain and a NASA astronaut. He died on his first spaceflight, when the Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-107) disintegrated during orbital reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. Brown became an astronaut in 1996, but had not served on a space mission prior to the Columbia disaster. Brown was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.