List of Famous people who died in 1978

Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal was a Nicaraguan journalist and publisher. He was the editor of La Prensa, the only significant opposition newspaper to the long rule of the Somoza family. He is a 1977 laureate of the Maria Moors Cabot Prize of the University of Columbia. He married Violeta Barrios de Chamorro who later went on to become President of Nicaragua (1990-1996). In 1978, he was shot to death, one of the precipitating events of the overthrow of the Somoza regime the following year.

Jackson Rogers Tate was a United States Navy admiral who began his naval career as an enlisted man and became one of the first naval aviators. He fathered a child, Victoria, during a brief love affair with Russian actress Zoya Fyodorova near the end of World War II, but did not know of her birth until 1973. He waged a successful two-year diplomatic quest for her to be allowed to visit him in the United States, finally meeting her in 1975. Her story is told in The Admiral's Daughter.

William Bingham Compton, 6th Marquess of Northampton, DSO, known as Earl Compton from 1897 to 1913, was a British peer and soldier.

Stanisław Dygat was a Polish writer. His most famous novel, "Jezioro Bodeńskie", was written during World War II and published in 1946. All of his works are partly autobiographical.

Sir Horace James Seymour was a British diplomat who served in Washington, D.C., Tehran, the Hague, Rome, and Chungking. He was Principal Private Secretary to the British Foreign Secretary and Assistant Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office. His most senior appointment was as British Ambassador to China from 1942 to 1946.

Tancred Ibsen was a Norwegian officer, pilot, film director, and screenwriter.