List of Famous people who died in 1987

Karl Gunnar Myrdal was a Swedish economist and sociologist. In 1974, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Friedrich Hayek for "their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena." He is best known in the United States for his study of race relations, which culminated in his book An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. The study was influential in the 1954 landmark U.S. Supreme Court Decision Brown v. Board of Education. In Sweden, his work and political influence were important to the establishment of the Folkhemmet and the welfare state.

Alberta Cooper Gay was an American domestic worker, schoolteacher and the mother of American recording artists Marvin Gaye and Frankie Gaye. Born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, she married Gaye's estranged father, minister Marvin Gay, Sr., after relocating to Washington, D.C., in her early twenties. She was the only other person present at the murder of her son committed by his father.

Eske Brun was a high civil servant in Greenland and in relation to Greenland from 1932 till 1964.