List of Famous people who died at 78

Alfred Henry Sturtevant was an American geneticist. Sturtevant constructed the first genetic map of a chromosome in 1911. Throughout his career he worked on the organism Drosophila melanogaster with Thomas Hunt Morgan. By watching the development of flies in which the earliest cell division produced two different genomes, he measured the embryonic distance between organs in a unit which is called the sturt in his honor. In 1967, Sturtevant received the National Medal of Science.

Mary Johnson (1896–1975) was a Swedish film actress of the silent era.

Selena Royle was an American actress, and later, an author.

Sidney Alderman Blackmer was an American actor who appeared in dozens of movies between 1914 and 1971, usually in major supporting roles. He was also a major Broadway performer.

Doris Emrick Lee was an American painter known for her figurative painting and printmaking. She won the Logan Medal of the Arts from the Chicago Art Institute in 1935. She is known as one of the most successful female artists of the Depression era in the United States.

Jacques Soustelle was an important and early figure of the Free French Forces, an anthropologist specializing in Pre-Columbian civilizations, and vice-director of the Musée de l'Homme in Paris in 1939. Governor General of Algeria, he helped the rise of Charles de Gaulle to the presidency of the Fifth Republic, but broke with De Gaulle over Algerian independence, joined the OAS in their efforts to overthrow De Gaulle and lived in exile between 1961 and 1968. On returning to France he resumed political and academic activity and was elected to the Académie française in 1983.

Nora Dunfee was an American Broadway and film actress and acting coach.

Elizabeth Spriggs was an English character actress.