List of Famous people who died at 79

Penn Nouth was a Cambodian politician. He served in the French colonial administration, then took active part in Cambodian politics, was several times Prime Minister of Cambodia as part of the Sangkum regime of Prince Norodom Sihanouk. He was the first prime minister of an independent Cambodia. He was prime minister for the sixth time from 31 January 1968 to 14 August 1969. On 18 March 1970, when Norodom Sihanouk was deposed by Penn Nouth's successor Lon Nol, Penn Nouth joined the monarch in his exile and became prime minister in the GRUNK coalition. His combined tenure as Prime Minister, spanning seven non-consecutive terms, is the second-longest in Cambodian history after Hun Sen.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin was a Russian philosopher, literary critic and scholar who worked on literary theory, ethics, and the philosophy of language. His writings, on a variety of subjects, inspired scholars working in a number of different traditions and in disciplines as diverse as literary criticism, history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and psychology. Although Bakhtin was active in the debates on aesthetics and literature that took place in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, his distinctive position did not become well known until he was rediscovered by Russian scholars in the 1960s.

John Michael Stringer was a film production designer, art director, painter and illustrator.

Minao Shibata ; September 29, 1916, Tokyo – February 2, 1996, Tokyo) was a Japanese composer.

Wahono was an Indonesian politician who served as Speaker of the People's Consultative Assembly during the New Order regime of president Suharto. Prior to that, he served as the Governor of East Java from 1983 until 1988, and served as a member of the Indonesian National Armed Forces from 1945 until 1977.

Pasquale Cajano was an Italian-American New York City Italian AM Radio personality DJ in the 1960s and later career a film actor. After two uncredited cameo appearances in The Age of Innocence and Where Evil Lies, his friend Martin Scorsese cast him in the 1995 crime drama Casino as Chicago Outfit boss Remo Gaggi, the film's de facto antagonist and inspired by the real-life Joseph Aiuppa.