List of Famous people who died in 1979

Nasser Al Saeed (1923–unknown) was a Saudi Arabian writer and the founder of the Arabian Peninsula People's Union (APPU). He was one of the most significant critics of the Saudi royal family. He was kidnapped in December 1979 in Beirut, Lebanon, and there has been no information about his whereabouts since then. His case is the first reported instance of the state-sponsored abduction by Saudi Arabia.

Étienne Dennery was a French academic, public servant and diplomat. Dennery studied at the École normale supérieure from 1923 to 1926 and became agrégé in history and geography. He received an Albert Kahn grant to travel abroad and spent time in China, India and Japan studying demographics and gathering material for a book published in French in 1930 and translated in English in 1931 under the title Asia's teeming millions: and its problems for the West. He later worked as an economic expert for the Lytton Commission on Manchuria. He then taught at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques, the Institute of Higher International Studies and at HEC Paris as well as giving invited lectures throughout the Northwestern United States. In 1935, Dennery and Louis Joxe co-founded the Centre d'études de politique étrangère which Joxe described as inspired by the British Royal Institute of International Affairs.