List of Famous people who died at 78

Abdulaziz bin Abdullah Al Zamil was an industrial engineer, whose work in industry and government was important to the industrial development of Saudi Arabia. As the original chief executive of Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC), as Minister of Industry and Electricity, and through his family's Zamil Group Holding Company, he was instrumental in creating a nationally based, profitable, high-tech industrial enterprise in Saudi Arabia. Al Zamil encouraged careful expansion with strong partners on a basis of sound technology in a wide variety of areas. Zamil Group, which now employs more than 12,000 people in 60 countries, is involved in diverse sectors including general construction, paints, plastics, petrochemicals, shipbuilding, and port management. He was awarded the King Abdul Aziz Medal, 1984 and the Richard J. Bolte Sr. Award for supporting industries in 2015.

Jerry Livingston was an American songwriter and dance orchestra pianist.

Oscar Brown Jr. was an American singer, songwriter, playwright, poet, civil rights activist, and actor. Aside from his career, Brown ran unsuccessfully for office in both the Illinois state legislature and the U.S. Congress. Brown wrote many songs, 12 albums, and more than a dozen musical plays.

Lucy Mae Bruner Baxley Smith was an American politician who served from 2003 to 2007 as the 28th Lieutenant Governor of Alabama and from 2009 until 2013 as President of the Alabama Public Service Commission. She was the first woman to hold the state's office of lieutenant governor. In 2006, she was the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for governor. In 2008, Lucy Baxley was elected President of the Alabama Public Service Commission, and was the only Democrat to win statewide that year. Until Democrat Doug Jones's victory over Republican Roy Moore in the 2017 U.S. Senate special election, Baxley was the most recent Democrat to hold statewide office in Alabama.

Sir John Richard Nicholas Stone was an eminent British economist, educated at Westminster School and Cambridge University. In 1984 he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for developing an accounting model that could be used to track economic activities on a national and, later, an international scale.

Mark Semenovich Pinsker or Mark Shlemovich Pinsker was a noted Russian mathematician in the fields of information theory, probability theory, coding theory, ergodic theory, mathematical statistics, and communication networks.

Allan Kaprow was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. His Happenings — some 200 of them — evolved over the years. Eventually Kaprow shifted his practice into what he called "Activities", intimately scaled pieces for one or several players, devoted to the study of normal human activity in a way congruent to ordinary life. Fluxus, performance art, and installation art were, in turn, influenced by his work.