List of Famous people who died in 1978

Fritz Henning Emil Paul Berndt Laves was a German crystallographer who served as the president of the German Mineralogical Society from 1956 to 1958. He is the namesake of Laves phases and the Laves tilings; the Laves graph, a highly-symmetrical three-dimensional crystal structure that he studied, was named after him by H. S. M. Coxeter.

Karl Swenson was an American theatre, radio, film, and television actor. Early in his career, he was credited as Peter Wayne.

Arthur Useldinger was a Luxembourgian politician. He was a member of the Communist Party of Luxembourg. Useldinger served two stints as Mayor of Esch-sur-Alzette: one following the end of the Second World War, and one in the 1970s, both in coalition with the Luxembourg Socialist Workers' Party. He is remembered as the most popular of Esch-sur-Alzette's post-war mayors. In addition, Useldinger sat in the national legislature, the Chamber of Deputies for a total of twenty-five years between the war and his death

Henryk Zygalski was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who worked at breaking German Enigma ciphers before and during World War II.

Salka Viertel was an Austrian Jewish actress and Hollywood screenwriter. While under contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1933 to 1937, Viertel co-wrote the scripts for many movies, particularly those starring her close friend Greta Garbo, including Queen Christina (1933) and Anna Karenina (1935). She also played opposite Garbo in MGM's German-language version of Anna Christie in 1930.

Roger Caillois was a French intellectual whose idiosyncratic work brought together literary criticism, sociology, and philosophy by focusing on diverse subjects such as games, play as well as the sacred. He was also instrumental in introducing Latin American authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda and Miguel Ángel Asturias to the French public. After his death, the French Literary award Prix Roger Caillois was named after him in 1991.