List of Famous people who died in 2003

Denis Clifford Quilley, OBE was an English actor and singer. From a family with no theatrical connections, Quilley was determined from an early age to become an actor. He was taken on by the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in his teens, and after a break for compulsory military service he began a West End career in 1950, succeeding Richard Burton in The Lady's Not For Burning. In the 1950s he appeared in revue, musicals, operetta and on television as well as in classic and modern drama in the theatre.

Katsuhiko Oku was a Japanese diplomat who played rugby for Oxford and Waseda University. In Britain he was known as "Katsu".

Manfred Georg Rudolf von Brauchitsch was a German auto racing driver who drove for Mercedes-Benz in the famous "Silver Arrows" of Grand Prix motor racing in the 1930s.

Manuel Vázquez Montalbán was a prolific Spanish writer from Catalonia: journalist, novelist, poet, essayist, anthologue, prologist, humorist, critic and political prisoner as well as a gastronome and a FC Barcelona supporter.

Joanna Tse Yuen-Man was a Hong Kong pulmonologist who died during the SARS epidemic in Hong Kong after volunteering to save patients with the syndrome.

Hatice Nüzhet Gökdoğan was a Turkish astronomer, mathematician and academic. After studying mathematics and astronomy in France as a young adult, Gökdoğan joined the faculty of Istanbul University in 1934 and completed her PhD. She was elected Dean of the university's Faculty of Science in 1954, becoming the first Turkish woman to serve as a university dean, and she was later made Chair of the astronomy department, significantly expanding her department's capacity and working to improve national and international collaboration between astronomers.

Fei Hsi-ping was a Chinese-born politician who served in the Legislative Yuan from 1948 to 1990.

Edward Wadie Said was a professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies. A Palestinian American born in Mandatory Palestine, he was a citizen of the United States by way of his father, a U.S. Army veteran.

Roberto Bolaño Ávalos was a Chilean novelist, short-story writer, poet and essayist. In 1999, Bolaño won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel Los detectives salvajes, and in 2008 he was posthumously awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for his novel 2666, which was described by board member Marcela Valdes as a "work so rich and dazzling that it will surely draw readers and scholars for ages". The New York Times described him as "the most significant Latin American literary voice of his generation".

Dulce Chacón was a Spanish poet, novelist and playwright.