List of Famous people who died at 78

Nabil Ali Mohammed Abd AL Azeez was an Egyptian scientist, writer, and intellectual who worked in the field of natural language processing and computational linguistics. Ali is considered a pioneer of Arabic language computing, making significant innovations in early computational linguistics.

Antonije Isaković was a Serbian writer and member of the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts. He won the NIN Prize in 1982 for his novel Tren 2.

Paul Gouin was a politician in Quebec, Canada, was the son of Lomer Gouin and the grandson of Honoré Mercier.

William John Fellner was a Hungarian-American economist and Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University from 1952 until his retirement in 1973. Born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, he studied at the University of Budapest, the ETH Zurich and the Frederick William University in Berlin, where he received his Ph.D. in economics in 1929, one year after Wassily Leontief. Fellner served on the Council of Economic Advisers from 1973 to 1975.

Hans Boskamp, born Johannes Hendricus Gerardus Hölscher, was a Dutch footballer and actor.

Achille Zavatta was a French clown, artist and circus operator.

William Clarence Eckstine was an American jazz and pop singer and a bandleader during the swing era. He was noted for his rich, almost operatic bass-baritone voice. His recording of "I Apologize" was given the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1999. The New York Times described him as an "influential band leader" whose "suave bass-baritone" and "full-throated, sugary approach to popular songs inspired singers like Earl Coleman, Johnny Hartman, Joe Williams, Arthur Prysock and Lou Rawls."

Stirling Dale Silliphant was an American screenwriter and producer. He is best remembered for his screenplay for In the Heat of the Night, for which he won an Academy Award in 1967, and for creating the television series Naked City and Route 66. Other features as screenwriter include the Irwin Allen productions The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure.

Franciszek Andrzej Bobola Biberstein-Starowieyski was a Polish artist. From 1949 to 1955, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków and Warsaw. He specialized in poster, drawing, painting, stage designing, and book illustration. He was a member of Alliance Graphique International (AGI). Throughout his career his style deviated from the socialist realism that was prevalent during the start of his career and the popular, brightly colored Cyrk posters; however he did create one Cyrk poster Homage to Picasso in 1966.