List of Famous people who died in 1975

Percy Lavon Julian was an American research chemist and a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants. He was the first to synthesize the natural product physostigmine, plus a pioneer in the industrial large-scale chemical synthesis of the human hormones progesterone and testosterone from plant sterols such as stigmasterol and sitosterol. His work laid the foundation for the steroid drug industry's production of cortisone, other corticosteroids, and birth control pills.

Moses Harry Horwitz, known professionally as Moe Howard, was an American actor and comedian, best known as the leader of the Three Stooges, the farce comedy team who starred in motion pictures and television for four decades. That group originally started out as Ted Healy and His Stooges, an act that toured the vaudeville circuit. Moe's distinctive hairstyle came about when he was a boy and cut off his curls with a pair of scissors, producing a ragged shape approximating a bowl cut.

Steve Roland "Pre" Prefontaine was an American long-distance runner who competed in the 1972 Summer Olympics. While running for the Oregon Track Club, Prefontaine set American records at every distance from 2,000 to 10,000 meters, as he prepared for the 1976 Olympics. Prefontaine's career, alongside those of Jim Ryun, Frank Shorter, and Bill Rodgers, generated considerable media coverage, which helped inspire the 1970s "running boom." He died when aged 24 in an automobile accident near his residence in Eugene, Oregon. One of the premier track meets in the world, the Prefontaine Classic, is held annually in Eugene in his honor. Prefontaine's celebrity and charisma later resulted in two 1990s feature films about his short life.

Charles Dillon "Casey" Stengel was an American Major League Baseball right fielder and manager, best known as the manager of the championship New York Yankees of the 1950s and later, the expansion New York Mets. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966.

Irene Harand was an Austrian human rights activist and campaigner against antisemitism.

Norman Graham Hill was a British racing driver and team owner, who was the Formula One World Champion twice, winning in 1962 and 1968 as well as being runner up on three occasions. Despite not passing his driving test until 1953 when he was already 24 years of age, and only entering the world of motor racing a year later in 1954, Hill would go on to become one of the greatest drivers of his generation. Perhaps the greatest achievement of his career was becoming the first driver to win the Triple Crown of Motorsport, an achievement which was defined as winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Indianapolis 500, and the Formula One World Drivers' Championship. While several of his peers have also espoused this definition, including fellow F1 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve, the achievement has instead been defined as including the Monaco Grand Prix rather than the Formula One World Championship. By this newer definition, Hill is still the only driver to have ever won the Triple Crown of Motorsport, winning at Monaco in such frequency in the 1960s that he became known as "Mr. Monaco". Wins in the most prestigious races of all three of the major disciplines of motor racing cemented Hill's position as one of the most complete drivers in the history of the sport. Hill was also frequently seen on television screens in the 1970s in a non-sporting capacity, appearing on a variety of programmes including panel games.

Yefim Zakharovich Kopelyan was a Soviet actor of theater and cinema, one of the legendary masters of the Bolshoi Theatre of Drama (BDT) in Leningrad. He performed the bright characteristic roles in the films The Elusive Avengers, Intervention, Eternal Call, The Straw Hat, and many others. He is also known for the voice-over in the TV series hit Seventeen Moments of Spring.

Michel Simon was a Swiss actor. He appeared in the notable films La Chienne (1931), Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932), L'Atalante (1934), Port of Shadows (1938), The Head (1959), and The Train (1964). The actor François Simon is his son.

Baron Hiroshi Ōshima was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army, Japanese ambassador to Germany before and during World War II and (unwittingly) a major source of communications intelligence for the Allies. His role was perhaps best summed up by General George C. Marshall, who identified Ōshima as "our main basis of information regarding Hitler's intentions in Europe". After World War II, he was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment, but was paroled in 1955.

David Marshall Williams was a convicted murderer and was the American firearms designer of the floating chamber and the short-stroke piston. Both designs used the high-pressure gas generated in or near the breech of the firearm to operate the action of semi-automatic firearms like the M1 Carbine.