List of Famous people who died at 79

Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin was a British-born American astronomer and astrophysicist who proposed in her 1925 doctoral thesis that stars were composed primarily of hydrogen and helium. Her groundbreaking conclusion was initially rejected because it contradicted the scientific wisdom of the time, which held that there were no significant elemental differences between the Sun and Earth. Independent observations eventually proved she was correct.

Edward Albert Arthur Woodward, OBE was an English actor and singer. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he began his career on stage. Throughout his career, he appeared in productions in both the West End of London and on Broadway in New York City. He came to wider attention from 1967 in the title role of the British television spy drama Callan, earning him the 1970 British Academy Television Award for Best Actor.

William Ashley Freehan was an American professional baseball player. He played his entire 15-year Major League Baseball career as a catcher for the Detroit Tigers. The premier catcher in the American League for several years from the 1960s into the early 1970s, he was named an All-Star in each of the 11 seasons in which he caught at least 75 games, and was the MVP runner-up for the champion Tigers in the 1968 World Series, handling a pitching staff that included World Series MVP Mickey Lolich and regular season MVP Denny McLain, who went on to become the first 30-game winner in the majors since 1934.

August Edmun "Augie" Garrido Jr. was an American professional baseball player and coach in NCAA Division I college baseball, best known for his stints with the Cal State Fullerton Titans and Texas Longhorns. Garrido compiled a collegiate record of 1,975–951–9, retiring in 2016 as the coach with the most wins in college baseball history. His win total was surpassed by Mike Martin of the Florida State Seminoles in 2018. He took his programs to 15 College World Series, winning five of them: three with Cal State Fullerton and two with Texas.

Boris Mikhailovich Sichkin was a Soviet film actor, dancer, choreographer, master conversational genre, composer.

Lillian Florence Hellman was an American playwright, author and screenwriter known for her success on Broadway, as well as her communist sympathies and political activism. She was blacklisted after her appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) at the height of the anti-communist campaigns of 1947–1952. Although she continued to work on Broadway in the 1950s, her blacklisting by the American film industry caused a drop in her income. Many praised Hellman for refusing to answer questions by HUAC, but others believed, despite her denial, that she had belonged to the Communist Party.

Benjamin Edwin Paschal was an American baseball outfielder who played eight seasons in Major League Baseball from 1915 to 1929, mostly for the New York Yankees. After two "cup of coffee" stints with the Cleveland Indians in 1915 and the Boston Red Sox in 1920, Paschal spent most of his career as the fourth outfielder and right-handed pinch hitter of the Yankees' Murderers' Row championship teams of the late 1920s. Paschal is best known for hitting .360 in the 1925 season while standing in for Babe Ruth, who missed the first 40 games with a stomach ailment.

Ülkü Adatepe was the youngest adopted daughter of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Her interactions with Atatürk were often featured in Turkish media, contributing to the depiction of Atatürk as the "father of Turks" For example, the cover of the Alfabe textbook featured Ülkü studying with Atatürk.

Robert Gordon Wilson was a Scottish politician and solicitor. He was the leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) from 1979 to 1990, and was SNP Member of Parliament (MP) for Dundee East from 1974 to 1987. He was Rector of the University of Dundee from 1983 to 1986.

Eva Pflug was a German film and television actress, as well as a voice actress. Born in Leipzig, she was well known for her work on the first German science fiction television series, Raumpatrouille Orion, during the 1960s.