List of Famous people who died in 2002

Cecil Geoffrey Howard was an English cricketer and cricket administrator.

Ong Teng Cheong was a Singaporean politician and architect who was the fifth president of Singapore serving a six-year term from 1 September 1993 to 31 August 1999 after winning the 1993 Singaporean presidential election. On 8 February 2002, at the age of 66, Mr Ong died in his sleep from lymphoma in the Singapore General Hospital.

Karel Reisz was a Czech-born British filmmaker who was active in post-World War II Britain, and one of the pioneers of the new realist strain in British cinema during the 1950s and 1960s.

Salah Mustafa Muhammad Shehade صلاح شحادة was a member of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas. He led the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades military wing of Hamas, until his targeted killing by Israel.

Bruce Weigert Paltrow was an American television and film director and producer.

Basappa Danappa Jatti was the fifth Vice President of India, serving from 1974 to 1979. He was Acting President of India from 11 February to 25 July 1977. The soft-spoken Jatti rose from a humble beginning as a Municipality member to India's second-highest office during a five-decade-long chequered political career.

Chester Milton Southam was an immunologist and oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Cornell University Medical College; he went to Thomas Jefferson University in 1971 and worked there until the end of his career. He ran many experiments involving the injection of live cancer cells into human subjects, without disclosing that they were cancer cells, and using subjects with questionable ability to consent, such as incarcerated people and senile patients in long-term care at a hospital. The New York State Attorney General encouraged the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York to take away Southam's medical license. Regardless, he went on to be president of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Theodore Ross Roberts, known as Ted Ross, was an American actor who was probably best known for his role as the Lion in The Wiz, an all-African American reinterpretation of The Wizard of Oz. He won a Tony Award for the original 1975 Broadway production and went on to recreate the role in the 1978 film version which also starred Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Richard Pryor, Nipsey Russell, and Lena Horne. Ross went on to appear in many films from including the role of Bitterman in the classic Arthur and on the television sitcoms Benson, The Jeffersons, What’s Happening Now, The Cosby Show and its spin-off A Different World. His final role was in the 1991 movie The Fisher King.

Kaloji Narayana Rao was an Indian poet, freedom fighter, anti-fascist and political activist of Telangana. He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 1992. The Telangana government honored Kaloji's birthday as Telangana Language Day.

Qiu Huizuo was a lieutenant general of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA), best known as one of the "four guardian warriors" of Vice Chairman Lin Biao during the Cultural Revolution. Qiu rose through the ranks of the PLA during the civil war between the Communists and the Kuomintang. He took charge as the PLA logistics chief in 1959, and was persecuted at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. He was later rehabilitated owing to the blessing of Zhou Enlai and Lin Biao, and elevated to the Politburo in 1969. In return, he helped to persecute Lin's enemies and consolidate Lin's power in the PLA. After Lin's flight and death in 1971, Qiu was purged and sentenced to 16 years in prison.