List of Famous people who died at 79

Antonio Joseph Mendez was an American technical operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who specialized in support of clandestine and covert CIA operations. He wrote three memoirs about his CIA experiences.

Mahmoud Yassin was an Egyptian actor. He was an iconic actor in both Egyptian cinema and television, portraying dramatic, psychological and romantic roles.

Holger Czukay was a German musician, probably best known as a co-founder of the krautrock group Can. Described as "successfully bridg[ing] the gap between pop and the avant-garde", Czukay was also notable for having created early important examples of ambient music, for having explored "world music" well before the term was coined, and for having been a pioneer of sampling.

Françoise Dolto, was a French pediatrician and psychoanalyst.

Mikhail Alexandrovich Ulyanov was a Soviet and Russian actor who was one of the most recognized persons of the post-World War II Soviet theatre and cinema. He was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1969 and a Hero of Socialist Labour in 1986 and received a special prize from the Venice Film Festival in 1982.

William Bradford Shockley Jr. was an American physicist and inventor. He was the manager of a research group at Bell Labs that included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The three scientists were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for "their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect".

Rudolf Karl Augstein was one of the most influential German journalists, a founder and part-owner of Der Spiegel magazine.

James Michael Smith was an English footballer and manager. As a player, he made 249 appearances in the Fourth Division of The Football League, representing Aldershot, Halifax Town, Lincoln City and Colchester United, and played for three-and-a-half years for Boston United of the Northern Premier League. He began a long managerial career with Boston United, and went on to take charge of top division clubs such as Birmingham City and Newcastle United. Smith served as a member of the board of directors of Oxford United for three years from 2006–09. He served as the League Managers' Association's chief executive and was inducted into their Hall of Fame for managing over 1000 matches. He was nicknamed "The Bald Eagle".

Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. A critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music". He is known for his groundbreaking work in electronic music, for introducing controlled chance into serial composition, and for musical spatialization.

Igor Vladimirovich Kvasha was a Soviet and Russian theater and film actor. He was a leading actor of Sovremennik Theater. Igor Kvasha was one of the Sovremennik founders along with Galina Volchek, Oleg Yefremov, Yevgeniy Yevstigneyev and Oleg Tabakov. He was honored with People's Artist of Russia in 1978.