List of Famous people who died at 79

Captain Stephen Wentworth Roskill, was a senior career officer of the Royal Navy, serving during the Second World War and, after his enforced medical retirement, served as the official historian of the Royal Navy from 1949 to 1960. He is now chiefly remembered as a prodigious author of books on British maritime history.

Támás (Thomas) Balogh, Baron Balogh was a British economist and member of the House of Lords.

Edward O'Sullivan Lee OD, better known as Bunny "Striker" Lee, was a Jamaican record producer.

Patrick Lane was a Canadian poet. He had written in several other genres, including essays, short stories, and was the author of the novel Red Dog, Red Dog.

Timothy Wentworth Beaumont, Baron Beaumont of Whitley was a British politician and an Anglican priest. He was politically active, successively, in the Liberal Party, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party. A life peer since 1967, he became the first Green Party member of either of the British Houses of Parliament of the United Kingdom when he joined the Green Party in 1999.

Diego Catalán was a Spanish philologist. He was the grandson of famed philologist, Ramón Menéndez Pidal, and María Goyri de Menéndez Pidal. Catalán died of heart disease on 9 April 2008, at the age of 83.

Jackson Rogers Tate was a United States Navy admiral who began his naval career as an enlisted man and became one of the first naval aviators. He fathered a child, Victoria, during a brief love affair with Russian actress Zoya Fyodorova near the end of World War II, but did not know of her birth until 1973. He waged a successful two-year diplomatic quest for her to be allowed to visit him in the United States, finally meeting her in 1975. Her story is told in The Admiral's Daughter.