List of Famous people who died at 79

Peter John Preston was a British journalist and author. He was editor of The Guardian for twenty years, from 1975 to 1995.

Ginette Leclerc was a French film actress. She appeared in nearly 90 films between 1932 and 1978. Her last TV appearance was in 1981. She was born Geneviève Lucie Menut in Paris, France and died in Paris. She was married to the actor Lucien Gallas.

Chief Antonio Oladeinde Fernandez was a Nigerian billionaire, business magnate and diplomat, a Pan-African leader and Permanent Representative of the Central African Republic to the United Nations. He was considered one of the richest men in Africa. In addition to a variety of other chieftaincy titles, he held the title of the Apesin Ola of the Egba clan of Yorubaland.

Jacques Lanzmann was a French journalist, writer and lyricist. He is best known as a novelist and for his songwriting partnership with Jacques Dutronc.

Brian Francis Johns was an Australian company director and journalist, who was managing director of the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) from 1987 to 1992, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) from 1995 to 2000.

Chinmoy Roy (1940-2019) was a Bengali Indian male comic actor. He was famous for his comic roles in Bengali movies, though his versatility has allowed him to play a variety of roles.

Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan was a German SS Helferin and female camp guard at Ravensbrück and Majdanek concentration camps, and the first Nazi war criminal to be extradited from the United States, to face trial in the then West Germany. Braunsteiner was known to prisoners of Majdanek concentration camp as the "Stomping Mare" and was said to have whipped women to death, thrown children by their hair onto trucks that took them to their deaths in gas chambers, hanged young female prisoners and stomped an old woman to death with her jackboots.

Ernest George Wilkins was a professional footballer and had 4 footballing sons, including the England International Ray Wilkins.

Padmarani, also spelled as Padma Rani, was an Indian actress who performed in Gujarati plays, Gujarati films, and Hindi films.

Arthur Morton Godfrey was an American radio and television broadcaster and entertainer who was sometimes introduced by his nickname The Old Redhead. The infamous on-air firing of cast member Julius LaRosa tainted his down-to-earth image and resulted in a marked decline in his popularity which he was never able to regain. At the peak of his success in the mid-1950s, Godfrey headed two CBS-TV weekly series and a daily 90-minute television mid-morning program, but his presence had been reduced by the early 1960s to hosting the occasional television special and his daily network radio show, which ended in 1972.