List of Famous people who died at 79

Liliana Piera Marina Brescia Clerici, best known professionally as Liliana Ross, was an Italian-born Chilean actress, director, playwright, and theatrical producer whose professional career spanned more than fifty years. She was best known to television audiences for her starring roles in the Chilean telenovelas La Colorina (1977) and Machos (2003).

David Ray Wilkerson was an American Christian evangelist, best known for his book The Cross and the Switchblade. He was the founder of the addiction recovery program Teen Challenge, and founding pastor of the non-denominational Times Square Church in New York City.

Frank Faylen was an American film and television actor. Largely a bit player and character actor, he occasionally played more fleshed-out supporting roles during his forty-two year acting career, during which he appeared in some 223 film and television productions, often without credit. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.

Kim Hunter was an American film, theatre, and television actress. She won both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, each as Best Supporting Actress, for her performance as Stella Kowalski in the 1951 film A Streetcar Named Desire. Decades later, she was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for her work on the soap opera The Edge of Night. She also portrayed the character of chimpanzee Zira in the first three installments of the original film adaptation Planet of the Apes.

Lev Nikolayevich Gumilyov was a Soviet historian, ethnologist, anthropologist and translator from Persian. He had a reputation for his highly non-orthodox theories of ethnogenesis and historiosophy. He was an exponent of Eurasianism.

Amalia Fuentes was a Filipino actress who reigned as a "Movie Queen" in the 1960s and 1970s. She was once dubbed as the "Elizabeth Taylor of the Philippines". She was the aunt of actors Aga Muhlach and Niño Muhlach and the mother of actress Liezl Martinez. She was the first Filipino Lux Soap model.

Theodore Harold Maiman was an American engineer and physicist who is widely credited with the invention of the laser. Maiman's laser led to the subsequent development of many other types of lasers. The laser was successfully fired on May 16, 1960. In a July 7, 1960 press conference in Manhattan, Maiman and his employer, Hughes Aircraft Company, announced the laser to the world. Maiman was granted a patent for his invention, and he received many awards and honors for his work. His experiences in developing the first laser and subsequent related events are recounted in his book, The Laser Odyssey, republished recently under a new title The Laser Inventor: Memoirs of Theodore H. Maiman.

Air Vice Marshal Ian Dougald McLachlan, CB, CBE, DFC was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Born in Melbourne, he was a cadet at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, before joining the Air Force in December 1930. After serving in instructional and general flying roles, he took command of No. 3 Squadron in December 1939, leading it into action in the Middle East less than a year later. Awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, he returned to Australia in 1942 to command air bases in Canberra and Melbourne. The following year he was posted to the South West Pacific, where he led successively Nos. 71 and 73 Wings. Having been promoted to group captain, he took charge of Southern Area Command in 1944, and No. 81 Wing in the Dutch East Indies the following year.

Charles Herbert Best was an American-Canadian medical scientist and one of the co-discoverers of insulin.

Cyril Bristow (1899–1978) was a British cinematographer who worked on roughly thirty films during the 1930s and 1940s at a variety of British studios.