List of Famous people who died in 1997

Paul Efthemios Tsongas was an American politician. He represented Massachusetts in both houses of the United States Congress, holding office from 1975 to 1985. He won eight states as a candidate in the 1992 Democratic presidential primaries, losing the nomination to Bill Clinton.

Ali Yata was a Moroccan communist leader. He was born in Tangier on 25 August 1920. Yata took part in the foundation of the Moroccan Communist Party (PCM) in 1943. After a few years he became the general secretary of the party, replacing the founding general secretary Léon Sultan who died in 1945.

Troy Ruttman was an American race car driver. He was the older brother of NASCAR driver Joe Ruttman, Jerry Ruttman, and Jimmie Ruttman.

Paul Doughty Bartlett was an American chemist.

Keith Roberts Porter was a Canadian-American cell biologist. He performed pioneering biology research using electron microscopy of cells, such as work on the 9 + 2 microtubule structure in the axoneme of cilia. Porter also contributed to the development of other experimental methods for cell culture and nuclear transplantation. He also was responsible for naming the endoplasmic reticulum.

Camilla Cederna was an Italian writer and editor. She is said to have introduced investigative journalism to the Italian news media. Some sources give her year of birth as 1921.

Sidney Darlington was an American electrical engineer and inventor of a transistor configuration in 1953, the Darlington pair. He advanced the state of network theory, developing the insertion-loss synthesis approach, and invented chirp radar, bombsights, and gun and rocket guidance.

Ivan Graziani was an Italian singer-songwriter and guitarist.

Edward Mills Purcell was an American physicist who shared the 1952 Nobel Prize for Physics for his independent discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance in liquids and in solids. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) has become widely used to study the molecular structure of pure materials and the composition of mixtures. Friends and colleagues knew him as Ed Purcell.