List of Famous people who died at 86
Rita Crocker Clements
Rita Crocker Clements was an American Republican Party organizer, an activist in historic preservation, and a First Lady of the U.S. state of Texas.
William Levitt
William Jaird Levitt was an American real-estate developer. As president of Levitt & Sons, he is widely credited as the father of modern American suburbia. He was named one of Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century." Levitt has been under criticism for his racially discriminatory policies when providing housing, which have been especially discriminatory to African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans.
Frederic Pryor
Frederic LeRoy Pryor was an American economist. While studying in Berlin during the partition of the city in 1961, he was imprisoned in East Germany for six months, then released in a Cold War "spy swap" that also involved downed American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers. He spent the bulk of his career as a member of the Swarthmore College faculty, as a professor of economics.
William M. Gray
William "Bill" Mason Gray was emeritus professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University (CSU), and the head of the Tropical Meteorology Project at CSU's Department of Atmospheric Sciences. He is widely regarded as a pioneer in the science of tropical cyclone forecasting and one of the world's leading experts on tropical storms. After retiring as a faculty member at CSU in 2005, Gray remained actively involved in both climate change and tropical cyclone research until his death.
David Shepherd
Richard David Shepherd CBE FRSA FGRA was a British artist and one of the world's most outspoken conservationists. He was most famous for his paintings of steam locomotives and wildlife, although he also often painted aircraft, portraits and landscapes. His work has been extremely popular since the 1960s in limited edition print reproduction and poster form, as well as other media such as Wedgwood limited edition plates. He published five books about his art, including an autobiography.
Rostislav Yankovsky
Rostislav Ivanovich Yankovsky was a Belarusian actor. He was born in Odessa on 5 February 1930, studied in Leninabad and debuted in the Tajik theatre in 1951. Since 1957, he worked in the Minsk Drama Theatre. Yankovsky was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1978. He is the older brother of the more famous Oleg Yankovsky. His son Igor Yankovsky is also an actor. In 1994 he became the Chairman of the Minsk International Film Festival Listapad.
Rudolf E. Kálmán
Rudolf Emil Kálmán was an Hungarian-American electrical engineer, mathematician, and inventor. He is most noted for his co-invention and development of the Kalman filter, a mathematical algorithm that is widely used in signal processing, control systems, and guidance, navigation and control. For this work, U.S. President Barack Obama awarded Kálmán the National Medal of Science on October 7, 2009.
Clyde Lovellette
Clyde Edward Lovellette was an American professional basketball player. Lovellette was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1988. He was the first basketball player in history to play on an NCAA championship team, Olympics gold medal basketball team, and NBA championship squad.
Dick Van Patten
Richard Vincent Van Patten was an American actor, comedian, businessman, and animal welfare advocate, whose career spanned seven decades of television. He was best known for his role as patriarch Tom Bradford on the ABC television comedy-drama Eight Is Enough.
Pik Botha
Roelof Frederik "Pik" Botha, was a South African politician who served as the country's foreign minister in the last years of the apartheid era. He was considered a liberal – at least in comparison to others in the ruling National Party and among the Afrikaner community – but the bulk of his career was spent defending South Africa's apartheid system of racial segregation against foreign criticism.