List of Famous people who died in 2009

Léo Missir (1925–2009) was a French composer.

Mamadou Dia was a Senegalese politician who served as the first Prime Minister of Senegal from 1957 until 1962, when he was forced to resign and was subsequently imprisoned amidst allegations that he was planning to stage a military coup to overthrow President Léopold Sédar Senghor.

Sadie Corré was an English actress, tap dancer, comic performer and leading pantomime cat. She was sometimes credited as Sadie Corrie.

David Lance Arneson was an American game designer best known for co-developing the first published role-playing game (RPG), Dungeons & Dragons, with Gary Gygax, in the early 1970s. Arneson's early work was fundamental to the development of the genre, developing the concept of the RPG using devices now considered to be archetypical, such as adventuring in "dungeons" and using a neutral judge who doubles as the voice and consciousness of all other characters to develop the storyline.

Thomas Edward Wilkes was an American art director, designer, photographer, illustrator, writer and producer-director.

Pierre Samuel was a French mathematician, known for his work in commutative algebra and its applications to algebraic geometry. The two-volume work Commutative Algebra that he wrote with Oscar Zariski is a classic. Other books of his covered projective geometry and algebraic number theory.

Candelario Orlando López Vergara, better known as Cachaíto, was a Cuban bassist and composer, who gained international fame after his involvement in the Buena Vista Social Club recordings. He was nicknamed Cachaíto after his uncle, the famous bassist and innovator of mambo music Israel "Cachao" López. His father and Cachao's older brother was Orestes López, also a famous bassist/multi-instrumentalist and composer.

Nilu Phule was an Indian actor known for his roles in the Marathi language movies and Marathi theatre. Nilu Phule acted in around 250 Marathi and Hindi movies during his film career. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and iconic actors to have graced the Marathi Cinema. He was most prominently seen playing the roles of notorious villains in the movies.

Robert Kirby was a British-born arranger of string sections for rock and folk music. He was best known for his work on the Nick Drake albums, Five Leaves Left and Bryter Layter, but also worked with Vashti Bunyan, Elton John, Ralph McTell, Strawbs, Paul Weller and Elvis Costello.