List of Famous people who died at 79

Yuri Pavlovich Pshenichnikov was a Soviet football goalkeeper and coach, born in Tashkent.

Donald Rutherford was an England international rugby union player and administrator. He was the first ever Technical Director of the Rugby Football Union at Twickenham, becoming Director of Rugby where he served with distinction from 1969 – 1999.

Héctor Cavallero, nicknamed El Tigre, was an Argentine politician, who was mayor of Rosario, Santa Fe, and a member of the Argentine Chamber of Deputies for the Province of Santa Fe.

Gert Heinrich Wollheim was a German expressionist painter later associated with the New Objectivity, who fled nazi Germany and worked in the United States after 1947.

David Meltzer was an American poet and musician of the Beat Generation and San Francisco Renaissance. Lawrence Ferlinghetti described him as "one of the greats of post-World-War-Two San Francisco poets and musicians". Meltzer came to prominence with inclusion of his work in the anthology, The New American Poetry 1945–1960.

Richard Brooks was an American screenwriter, film director, novelist and film producer. Nominated for eight Oscars in his career, he was best known for Blackboard Jungle (1955), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Elmer Gantry, In Cold Blood (1967) and Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977).

Nathaniel Mayer Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild was a British banker, scientist, intelligence officer during World War II, and later a senior executive with Royal Dutch Shell and N M Rothschild & Sons, and an advisor to the Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher governments of the UK. He was a member of the prominent Rothschild family.

Erich Böhme was a German journalist and television presenter.

Emiliano Augusto Cavalcanti de Albuquerque Melo, known as Di Cavalcanti, was a Brazilian painter who sought to produce a form of Brazilian art free of any noticeable European influences. His wife was the painter Noêmia Mourão, who would be an inspiration in his works in the later 1930s.

Pierre Emil George Salinger was an American journalist, author and politician. He had served as the ninth White House Press Secretary for United States Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Salinger served as a United States Senator in 1964 and as campaign manager for the 1968 Robert F. Kennedy presidential campaign.