List of Famous people who died in 1989

Morris Joseph Starsky, an American political and social activist and philosophy professor, served as a tenured faculty member in the Arizona State University Philosophy Department until his termination by the Arizona Board of Regents in 1970.

Jean-Louis Verdier was a French mathematician who worked, under the guidance of his doctoral advisor Alexander Grothendieck, on derived categories and Verdier duality. He was a close collaborator of Grothendieck, notably contributing to SGA 4 his theory of hypercovers and anticipating the later development of étale homotopy by Michael Artin and Barry Mazur, following a suggestion he attributed to Pierre Cartier. Saul Lubkin's related theory of rigid hypercovers was later taken up by Eric Friedlander in his definition of the étale topological type.

Teiichi Suzuki was a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army, minister of state and member of the House of Peers. A close associate of Hideki Tojo, he helped plan Japan's wartime economy.

Mete Adanır was a Turkish Cypriot football forward who played for clubs in England and Turkey.

Air Marshal Sir John Patrick Joseph McCauley, KBE, CB was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). He served as Chief of the Air Staff from 1954 to 1957. A Duntroon graduate, McCauley spent four years in the Australian Military Forces before transferring to the RAAF in 1924. He was Director of Training from 1936 to 1938, and commanded engineering and flying training schools for the first eighteen months of World War II. Having been promoted to group captain in 1940, he was posted to Singapore in June 1941 to take charge of all RAAF units defending the area. He earned praise for his efforts in attacking invading Japanese forces before the fall of Singapore, and for his dedication in evacuating his men. After serving as Deputy Chief of the Air Staff in 1942–44, he was appointed to a senior operational role with the Royal Air Force's 2nd Tactical Air Force in Europe, where he saw out the rest of the war.

Muzaffer Badalıoğlu was a Turkish footballer who last played as a defender for Samsunspor, and also appeared for the Turkey national football team.

Kehar Singh an assistant in the Directorate General of Supply and Disposal, New Delhi, was tried and executed for conspiracy in the plot of the Indira Gandhi assassination, carried out by Satwant Singh and Beant Singh. He was hanged in Tihar Jail on 6 January 1989. Beant Singh was the nephew of Kehar Singh. The assassination was "motivated" by Operation Blue Star, in which Indian Armed Forces personnel engaged an assault on the Golden Temple Complex at Amritsar. It was carried out starting on 3 June 1984. This was a military operation to control the Sikh extremist movement in Punjab.