List of Famous people who died at 85

David John Duncan was an award-winning Scottish Canadian fantasy and science fiction author.

David S. Saxon was an American physicist and educator who served as the President of University of California system as well as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Corporation.

David Jerome Oppenheim was an American clarinetist, and classical music and television producer. Oppenheim directed the Masterworks division of Columbia Records from 1950 to 1959. During this time he worked with numerous major figures in the music world including Igor Stravinsky, with whom he formed a friendship, later producing for him. In the 1960s, he worked for the television production company Robert Saudek Associates and worked as a writer and producer for CBS from 1962 to 1967. His 1964 documentary about cellist Pablo Casals, Casals at 88, won the Prix Italia. Dean of the New York University School of the Arts (NYU) from 1969 to 1991, in 1985, he was the principal architect of the Tisch School of the Arts. One of his major achievements was developing the NYU arts programs into a major institution with courses offered in photography, cinema, musical theater, dramatic acting, and writing.

Norman Newell was an English record producer, mainly active in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as co-writer of many notable songs. As an A&R manager for EMI, he worked with musicians such as Shirley Bassey, Dalida, Claude François, Vera Lynn, Russ Conway, Bette Midler, Judy Garland, Petula Clark, Jake Thackray, Malcolm Roberts, Bobby Crush and Peter and Gordon. Newell was particularly known for his recorded productions of West End musicals.

Ralph Saul Phillips was an American mathematician and academic known for his contributions to functional analysis, scattering theory, and servomechanisms. He served as a Professor of mathematics at Stanford University. He made major contributions to acoustical scattering theory in collaboration with Peter Lax, proving remarkable results on local energy decay and the connections between poles of the scattering matrix and the analytic properties of the resolvent. With Lax, he coauthored the widely referred book on scattering theory titled Scattering Theory for Automorphic Functions. Phillips received the 1997 Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement.

Crescenzio Rinaldini was the Roman Catholic bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Araçuaí, Brazil.

Cheng Ch'ing-wen was a Taiwanese writer and a graduate of National Taiwan University. He worked at the then government-run Hua Nan Bank for forty years. His works in English are generally under the transliteration "Cheng Ch'ing-Wen" and that is how he is described in many English-language publications published in Taiwan. The transliteration "Tzeng Ching-wen" is also used.