List of Famous people who died at 79

Louie Broady Nunn was an American politician who served as the 52nd governor of Kentucky. Elected in 1967, he was the only Republican to hold the office between the end of Simeon Willis' term in 1947 and the election of Ernie Fletcher in 2003.

Catherine Hessling was a French actress and the first wife of film director Jean Renoir. Hessling appeared in 15, mostly silent, films before retiring from the acting profession and withdrawing from public life in the mid-1930s.

Peter Douglas Nicholls was an Australian literary scholar and critic. He was the creator and a co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction with John Clute.

Helen Gahagan Douglas was an American actress and politician. Her career included success on Broadway, as a touring opera singer, and the starring role in the 1935 movie She, in which her portrayal of the villain inspired Disney's Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).

Madampu Sankaran Namboothiri, popularly known as Madampu Kunjukuttan, was a Malayalam actor, author and screenplay writer.

Casimir Marie Ange Oyé-Mba was a Gabonese politician. After serving as Governor of the Bank of Central African States (BEAC) from 1978 to 1990, Oyé-Mba was Prime Minister of Gabon from 3 May 1990 to 2 November 1994. Subsequently he remained in the government as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs from 1994 to 1999, Minister of State for Planning from 1999 to 2007, and Minister of State for Mines and Oil from 2007 to 2009.

Alan John Gilzean was a Scottish professional football player, active from 1955 to 1975. Gilzean played most prominently for Dundee and Tottenham Hotspur, and also appeared in 22 international games for Scotland. He helped Dundee win the Scottish league championship in 1961–62 and Tottenham win the FA Cup in 1967, two League Cups and the 1971–72 UEFA Cup. He died on 8 July 2018 after being diagnosed with a brain tumour.

James Hal Cone (1938–2018) was an American theologian, best known for his advocacy of black theology and black liberation theology. His 1969 book Black Theology and Black Power provided a new way to comprehensively define the distinctiveness of theology in the black church. His message was that Black Power, defined as black people asserting the humanity that white supremacy denied, was the gospel in America. Jesus came to liberate the oppressed, advocating the same thing as Black Power. He argued that white American churches preached a gospel based on white supremacy, antithetical to the gospel of Jesus. Cone's work was influential from the time of the book's publication, and his work remains influential today. His work has been both used and critiqued inside and outside the African-American theological community. He was the Charles Augustus Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary until his death.

Yevgeni Nikolayevich Lazarev, also credited as Eugene Lazarev, was a Russian–American actor and director. He was born in Minsk.

Gerhard Löwenthal was a prominent German journalist, human rights activist and author. He presented the ZDF-Magazin, a news magazine of ZDF which highlighted human rights abuses in communist-ruled Eastern Europe, from 1969 to 1987. Löwenthal, who was known as a staunch anticommunist, was president of the Germany Foundation from 1977 to 1994.