List of Famous people who died at 61

Barbara Dittus was a German film actress. She appeared in more than ninety films from 1959 to 2001.

Karl Josef Silberbauer was an Austrian police officer, SS member and undercover investigator for the West German Federal Intelligence Service. He was stationed in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam during World War II, where he was promoted to the rank of Hauptscharführer. In 1963, Silberbauer, by then an Inspector in the Vienna police, was exposed as the commander of the 1944 Gestapo raid on the Secret Annex and the arrests of Anne Frank, her fellow fugitives, and their protectors.

Philippe Volter was a Belgian actor and director. Born Philippe Wolter to theatre director Claude Volter and his wife, actress Jacqueline Bir, young Philippe began his career in Brussels in 1985.

Piers John Sellers OBE was a British-American meteorologist, NASA astronaut and Director of the Earth Science Division at NASA/GSFC. He was a veteran of three space shuttle missions. Sellers attended Cranbrook School, Cranbrook, Kent, United Kingdom, until 1973, and achieved a bachelor's degree in ecological science from the University of Edinburgh in 1976. In 1981 he gained a doctorate in biometeorology from the University of Leeds. In 2011, Sellers retired from the NASA Astronaut Corps.

Jack Soo was an American singer and actor. He was best known for his role as Detective Nick Yemana on the television sitcom Barney Miller.

Mohammed Khadda was an Algerian painter, sculptor, and writer. Khadda has been considered to be among the founders of contemporary Algerian painting and one of the many representatives of the "sign painters." He debuted in 1960. His influences included Cubism and Arabic calligraphy. He tended toward the non-figurative or abstract. He represented a generation of Algerian artists who combined the ideas of calligraphic heritage and formal language of Western formal writing through Western abstraction through the 1950s.

Min Chiu Li was a Chinese-American oncologist and cancer researcher. Li was the first scientist to use chemotherapy to cure widely metastatic, malignant cancer.

Lawrence Anthony was an international conservationist, environmentalist, explorer and bestselling author. He was the long-standing head of conservation at the Thula Thula animal reserve in Zululand, South Africa, and the Founder of The Earth Organization, a privately registered, independent, international conservation and environmental group with a strong scientific orientation. He was an international member of the esteemed Explorers Club of New York and a member of the National Council of the Southern Africa Association for the Advancement of Science, South Africa's oldest scientific association.

Yuri Andreevich Belov was a Soviet film and theatre actor. He was one of the most popular actors of Soviet cinema in the 1950's and 1960's.

Christopher Andrew Tsangarides was a British Grammy-nominated record producer, sound engineer, and mixer of Greek Cypriot origin. He was best known for his work with many heavy metal bands, including Gary Moore, Thin Lizzy, Judas Priest, Helloween, Anvil, Angra, Anthem, Yngwie Malmsteen, and Tygers of Pan Tang. Tsangarides worked with many pop and alternative artists as well, including Depeche Mode, Tom Jones, Concrete Blonde, and The Tragically Hip.