List of Famous people who died at 81

Terrence McNally was an American playwright, librettist, and screenwriter.

Adnan Khashoggi was a Saudi businessman known for his lavish business deals and lifestyle. He is estimated to have had a peak net worth of around US$4 billion in the early 1980s.

Erich Ernst Paul Honecker was a German communist politician who led East Germany from 1971 until shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in October 1989. He held the posts of General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and Chairman of the National Defense Council; in 1976, he replaced Willi Stoph as Chairman of the State Council, the official head of state. As leader of East Germany, Honecker had close ties to the Soviet Union, which maintained a large army in the country.

Hirotugu Akaike was a Japanese statistician. In the early 1970s, he formulated the Akaike information criterion (AIC). AIC is now widely used for model selection, which is commonly the most difficult aspect of statistical inference; additionally, AIC is the basis of a paradigm for the foundations of statistics. Akaike also made major contributions to the study of time series. As well, he had a large role in the general development of statistics in Japan.

Sheila Dikshit, occasionally anglicised Dixit, was an Indian politician and stateswoman. The longest-serving Chief Minister of Delhi, as well as the longest-serving female chief minister of any Indian state, she served for a period of 15 years beginning in 1998. Dikshit led Congress party to three consecutive electoral victories in Delhi.

Roberto Roena was a Puerto Rican salsa music percussionist, orchestra leader, and dancer. Roena was one of the original members of [Cortijo y su combo and later with El Gran Combo]]. He later became the leader of his own band, "Roberto Roena y Su Apollo Sound", widely considered one of the best Latin salsa bands in Puerto Rico. Roena has also been a long-time member of the Fania All Stars, a salsa supergroup that has enjoyed worldwide success since the 1970s.

Girish Karnad was an Indian actor, film director, Kannada writer, playwright and a Rhodes Scholar, who predominantly worked in South Indian cinema and Bollywood. His rise as a playwright in the 1960s marked the coming of age of modern Indian playwriting in Kannada, just as Badal Sarkar did in Bengali, Vijay Tendulkar in Marathi, and Mohan Rakesh in Hindi. He was a recipient of the 1998 Jnanpith Award, the highest literary honour conferred in India.

Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu, known as Marguerite Duras, was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film Hiroshima mon amour (1959) earned her a nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards.

Gordon Banks was an English professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper. He made 679 appearances during a 20-year professional career, and won 73 caps for England, highlighted by starting every game of the nation's 1966 World Cup victory.

Samuel Phillips Huntington was an American political scientist, adviser and academic. He spent more than half a century at Harvard University, where he was director of Harvard's Center for International Affairs and the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor.