List of Famous people who died in 1978

Shaykh Mustafa Ismail was an Egyptian Quran reciter. The quadrumvirate of El Minshawy, Abdul Basit, Mustafa Ismail, and Al-Hussary are generally considered the most important and famous Qurra' of modern times to have had an outsized impact on the Islamic world.

El Hadj M'Hamed El Anka, also known as Hadj Muhammed Al Anka, El-Hadj M'Hamed El Anka, was considered a Grand Master of Andalusian classical music and Algerian chaâbi music.

Malek Haddad was an Algerian poet and writer in the French language.

Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist who featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 1960s and 1970s. She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard College in New York City and her MA and PhD degrees from Columbia University. Mead served as President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1975.

Claude Robert Eatherly was an officer in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II, and the pilot of a weather reconnaissance aircraft Straight Flush that supported the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, August 6, 1945.