List of Famous people who died at 78

Louis Frederick Fieser was an American organic chemist, professor, and in 1968, professor emeritus at Harvard University. He is renowned for inventing military effective napalm whilst he worked at Harvard in 1942. His award-winning research included work on blood-clotting agents including the first synthesis of vitamin K, synthesis and screening of quinones as antimalarial drugs, work with steroids leading to the synthesis of cortisone, and study of the nature of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

Michael J. Noonan was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician. He served as Minister for Defence from 1987 until 1989.

Maria Armanda Pires Falcão, better known by her pen name Vera Lagoa, was a Portuguese journalist and newspaper director. She was the first female television presenter in Portugal. She was also the first journalist to be prosecuted by a president of the Republic of Portugal.

Mae Mallory was an activist of the Civil Rights Movement and a Black Power movement leader active in the 1950s and 1960s. She is best known as an advocate of school desegregation and of black armed self-defense.

Dean Gooderham Acheson was an American statesman and lawyer. As United States Secretary of State in the administration of President Harry S. Truman from 1949 to 1953, he played a central role in defining American foreign policy during the Cold War. Acheson helped design the Marshall Plan and was a key player in the development of the Truman Doctrine and creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.