List of Famous people who died at 83
P. V. Narasimha Rao
Pamulaparthi Venkata Narasimha Rao was an Indian lawyer and politician who served as the 9th Prime Minister of India from 1991 to 1996. His ascendancy to the prime ministership was politically significant in that he was the second holder of this office from a non-Hindi-speaking region and the first from South India. He led an important administration, overseeing a major economic transformation and several home incidents affecting national security of India. Rao, who held the Industries portfolio, was personally responsible for the dismantling of the Licence Raj, as this came under the purview of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, reversing the socialist policies of Rajiv Gandhi's government. He is often referred to as the "Father of Indian Economic Reforms". Future prime ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh continued the economic reform policies pioneered by Rao's government. He employed Dr. Manmohan Singh as his Finance Minister to embark on historic economic transition. With Rao's mandate, Dr. Manmohan Singh launched India's globalisation angle of the reforms that implemented the International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies to rescue the almost bankrupt nation from economic collapse. Rao was also referred to as Chanakya for his ability to steer economic and political legislation through the parliament at a time when he headed a minority government.
Roy Hudd
Roy Hudd, OBE was an English comedian, actor, presenter, radio host, author and authority on the history of music hall entertainment.
Mary Leakey
Mary Douglas Leakey, FBA was a British paleoanthropologist who discovered the first fossilised Proconsul skull, an extinct ape which is now believed to be ancestral to humans. She also discovered the robust Zinjanthropus skull at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, eastern Africa. For much of her career she worked with her husband, Louis Leakey, at Olduvai Gorge, where they uncovered fossils of ancient hominines and the earliest hominins, as well as the stone tools produced by the latter group. Mary Leakey developed a system for classifying the stone tools found at Olduvai. She discovered the Laetoli footprints, and at the Laetoli site she discovered hominin fossils that were more than 3.75 million years old.
Dorothy Day
Dorothy Day was an American journalist, social activist and anarchist who, after a bohemian youth, became a Catholic Christian without abandoning her social and anarchist activism. She was perhaps the best-known political radical in the American Catholic Church.
Jack Kevorkian
Jack Kevorkian was an American pathologist and euthanasia proponent. He publicly championed a terminal patient's right to die by physician-assisted suicide, embodied in his quote "Dying is not a crime". Kevorkian said that he assisted at least 130 patients, to that end. He was convicted of murder in 1999 and was often portrayed in the media with the name of "Dr. Death". There was support for his cause, and he helped set the platform for reform.
Makoto Wada
Makoto Wada was a Japanese illustrator, essayist, and film director.
John Noakes
John Noakes was an English television presenter and personality, who co-presented the BBC children's magazine programme Blue Peter in the 1960s and 1970s. He was the show's longest-serving presenter, with a tenure that lasted 12 years and 6 months.
Mary Oliver
Mary Jane Oliver was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her work is inspired by nature, rather than the human world, stemming from her lifelong passion for solitary walks in the wild. It is characterised by a sincere wonderment at the impact of natural imagery, conveyed in unadorned language. In 2007 she was declared to be the country's best-selling poet.
Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra
Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra was a Brazilian army officer, politician and torturer who served as a colonel in the Brazilian Army.
Nina Doroshina
Nina Mikhaylovna Doroshina was a Soviet and Russian actress of theater and cinema, People's Artist of the RSFSR (1985).