List of Famous people who died in 1979

Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre was a Peruvian politician, philosopher, and author who founded the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) political movement, the oldest currently existing political party in Peru by the name of the Peruvian Aprista Party (PAP).

Charles Edward Coughlin, commonly known as Father Coughlin, was a Canadian-American Roman Catholic priest who was based in the United States near Detroit. He was the founding priest of the National Shrine of the Little Flower church. He was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience: during the 1930s, an estimated 30 million listeners tuned to his weekly broadcasts.

Kalpana, born Sharat Lata, was an Indian Kannada film actress. She was affectionately referred to as Minugu Taare among the film fraternity. She was widely recognised as one of the greatest actresses of Kannada cinema who enjoyed both fan following and critical acclaim. She made her screen debut as a lead actress in the 1963 release Saaku Magalu directed by veteran B. R. Panthulu. During a career that spanned from the early 1960s to the late 1970s, Kalpana appeared in numerous commercially successful as well as critically appreciated films, many of which featured her alongside actor Rajkumar. She worked in a few Tamil, Tulu, Malayalam and Telugu films as well. Many of her successful films were female-centric, giving ample scope for her performance.

Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Award winner in 1970, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976. Dwight Garner argued that she was perhaps “the most purely gifted poet of the 20th century.”

Frans Kaisiepo was a Papuan politician and Indonesian nationalist. He served as the fourth Governor of Papua Province. In 1993, Kaisiepo was posthumously declared a National Hero of Indonesia for his lifelong efforts to unite West Irian with Indonesia. As the representative of Papua province, he was involved in the Malino Conference, where the formation of the United States of Indonesia was discussed.

Harry Herbet Bennett, was a boxer, Naval sailor, and businessman. From the 1920s through 1945, he worked for Ford Motor Company and was best known as the head of Ford’s "service department", the company's internal security agency. While working for Henry Ford, Bennett's union busting tactics made him an enemy of the United Auto Workers (UAW) trade union. He gained infamy for his involvement in activities such as in the Battle of the Overpass, a 1937 incident where UAW members protesting for higher wages were assaulted by Ford security guards.

Pyotr Mikhaylovich Gavrilov was a Soviet officer known as the hero of the Defense of Brest Fortress.

Asa Philip Randolph was an American labor unionist, civil rights activist, and socialist politician.

Claus Ludvig Juell was a Norwegian sailor who competed in the 1920 Summer Olympics.

Francine Faure was a French pianist specializing in Bach and a mathematician. She was the second wife of Albert Camus, whom she met in 1937 in Algiers. They were married in Lyon on 3 December 1940. She came from a middle-class French family in Oran, Algeria, which was a French colony at the time. She also taught mathematics, sometimes as a supply teacher.