List of Famous people who died at 85

John Anthony Volpe was an American businessman, diplomat, and politician from Massachusetts. A son of Italian immigrants, he founded and owned a large construction firm. Politically, he was a Republican in increasingly Democratic Massachusetts, serving as its 61st and 63rd Governor from 1961 to 1963 and 1965 to 1969, as the United States Secretary of Transportation from 1969 to 1973, and as the United States Ambassador to Italy from 1973 to 1977. As Secretary of Transportation, Volpe was an important figure in the development of the Interstate Highway System at the federal level.

Adriaan Daniël Fokker was a Dutch physicist and musician. He was the inventor of the Fokker organ, a 31-tone equal-tempered (31-TET) organ.

Sikander Bakht was an Indian politician belonging to the Indian National Congress, the Janata Party and, finally, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He was elected as the Vice President of the BJP, served its leader in the Rajya Sabha, and as a cabinet minister in the NDA government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. In 2000, he was awarded Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian honour of the Government of India.

John Joseph Krol was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He was Archbishop of Philadelphia from 1961 to 1988, having previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Cleveland (1953–1961). He was created a cardinal in 1967 by Pope Paul VI.

Norman "Hurricane" Smith was an English musician, record producer and engineer.

Helen Merrell Lynd was an American sociologist, social philosopher, educator, and author. She is best known for conducting the first Middletown studies of Muncie, Indiana, with her husband, Robert Staughton Lynd; as the coauthor of Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture (1929) and Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Conflicts (1937); and a pioneer in the use of social surveys. She was also the author of England in the 1880s: Toward a Social Basis for Freedom (1945), Shame and the Search for Identity (1958), and essays on academic freedom. In addition to writing and research, Lynd was a lecturer at Vassar College, and a professor at Sarah Lawrence College from 1929 to 1964.

Bruno Hasbrouck Zimm was an American chemist. He was a professor of chemistry and biochemistry from University of California, San Diego, and a leading polymer chemist and DNA researcher.

Joseph Harold Greenberg was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.