List of Famous people who died in 2004

Mary McGrory was an American journalist and columnist. She specialized in American politics, and was noted for her detailed coverage of political maneuverings. She wrote over 8,000 columns, but no books, and made very few media or lecture appearances. She was a fierce opponent of the Vietnam War and was on Richard Nixon's enemies list. One reviewer said:

McGrory is what you get when proximity to power, keen observation skills, painstaking reporting, a judgmental streak and passionate liberalism coalesce in a singularly talented writer — one whose abilities are matched by the times.

William Hayward Pickering was a New Zealand-born rocket scientist who headed Pasadena, California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for 22 years, retiring in 1976. He was a senior NASA luminary and pioneered the exploration of space. Pickering was also a founding member of the United States National Academy of Engineering.

Tomotsugu Kutsuwada was a Japanese professional wrestler, better known by the ring name Samson Kutsuwada .

Peter Diamond was an English actor who had trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and is remembered as a stuntman on television or film.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Postnikov was a Soviet mathematician, known for his work in algebraic and differential topology.

Aaron Director, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, played a central role in the development of the field Law and Economics and the Chicago school of economics. Together with his brother-in-law, Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, Director influenced some of the next generation of jurists, including Robert Bork, Richard Posner, Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

Willem Leonard Oltmans was a Dutch investigative journalist and author active in international politics.

Erich Hauser was a German sculptor.

Gaetano Badalamenti was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. Don Tano Badalamenti was the capofamiglia of his hometown Cinisi, Sicily, and headed the Sicilian Mafia Commission in the 1970s. In 1987, he was sentenced in the United States to 45 years in federal prison for being one of the leaders in the so-called "Pizza Connection", a $1.65 billion drug-trafficking ring that used pizzerias as fronts to distribute heroin from 1975 to 1984. He was also in Italy sentenced to life imprisonment in 2002, for the 1978 murder of Peppino Impastato.