List of Famous people who died at 78

Sir Dirk Bogarde was an English actor and writer. Initially a matinée idol in films such as Doctor in the House (1954) for the Rank Organisation, he later acted in art-house films. In a second career, he wrote seven best-selling volumes of memoirs, six novels and a volume of collected journalism, mainly from articles in The Daily Telegraph.

Klausjürgen Wussow was a German stage, film and television actor.

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis OBE, FNA, FASc, FRS was an Indian scientist and statistician. He is best remembered for the Mahalanobis distance, a statistical measure, and for being one of the members of the first Planning Commission of free India. He made pioneering studies in anthropometry in India. He founded the Indian Statistical Institute, and contributed to the design of large-scale sample surveys. For his contributions, Mahalanobis has been considered the father of modern statistics in India.

Alan Robert Kalter was an American television announcer from New York City. He is best known as the announcer for the Late Show with David Letterman, a role he held from September 4, 1995 until Letterman's retirement on May 20, 2015. He also hosted Alan Kalter's Celebrity Interview that ran concurrently with The Late Show.

Ahmet Necip Fazıl Kısakürek was a Turkish poet, novelist, playwright, and Islamist ideologue. He is also known simply by his initials NFK. He was noticed by the French philosopher Henri Bergson, who later became his teacher.

Francesco Maria Columbu was an Italian bodybuilder, powerlifter, actor, author, producer, and a licensed chiropractor.

Coretta Scott King was an American author, activist, civil rights leader, and the wife of Martin Luther King Jr. An advocate for African-American equality, she was a leader for the civil rights movement in the 1960s. King was also a singer who often incorporated music into her civil rights work. King met her husband while attending graduate school in Boston. They both became increasingly active in the American civil rights movement.

Islam Abduganiyevich Karimov was the leader of Uzbekistan and its predecessor state, the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, from 1989 until his death in 2016. He was the last First Secretary of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan from 1989 to 1991, when the party was reconstituted as the People's Democratic Party of Uzbekistan (PDP); he led the PDP until 1996. He was the President of the Uzbek SSR from 24 March 1990 until he declared the independence of Uzbekistan on 1 September 1991.

Diane Cilento was an Australian actress and author. She is best known for her film roles in Tom Jones (1963), which earned her an Academy Award nomination, Hombre (1967) and The Wicker Man (1973). She also received a Tony Award nomination for her performance as Helen of Troy in the play Tiger at the Gates.

Âşık Veysel was a Turkish ashik and highly regarded poet of the Turkish folk literature. He was born in the Sivrialan village of the Şarkışla district, in the province of Sivas. He was an ashik, poet, songwriter, and a bağlama virtuoso, the prominent representative of the Anatolian ashik tradition in the 20th century. He was blind for most of his lifetime. His songs are usually sad tunes, often dealing with the inevitability of death. However, Veysel used a wide range of themes for his lyrics; based on morals, values, and constant questioning on issues such as love, care, beliefs, and how he saw the world as a blind man.