List of Famous people who died in 2009

Andrew Newell Wyeth was a visual artist, primarily a realist painter, working predominantly in a regionalist style. He was one of the best-known U.S. artists of the middle 20th century.

Ronald Arthur Silver was an American actor/activist, director, producer, and radio host. As an actor, he portrayed Henry Kissinger, Alan Dershowitz and Angelo Dundee. He was awarded a Tony in 1988 for Best Actor for Speed-the-Plow, a satirical dissection of the American movie business.

Barbara Lauwers, later known as Barbara Lauwers Podoski, was a corporal in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) and won the Bronze Star after one of her operations led to the defection of 600 soldiers from behind Italian lines and the withdrawal of their support from the Germans. She was stationed at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Morale Operations (MO) headquarters in Rome, Italy.

James Dennis Carroll was an American author, poet, autobiographer, and punk musician. Carroll was best known for his 1978 autobiographical work The Basketball Diaries; the book inspired a 1995 film of the same title that starred Leonardo DiCaprio as Carroll.

Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theory of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anthropology at the Collège de France between 1959 and 1982, was elected a member of the Académie française in 1973 and was a member of the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. He received numerous honors from universities and institutions throughout the world and has been called, alongside James George Frazer and Franz Boas, the "father of modern anthropology".

Joseph Wiseman was a Canadian American theatre and film actor, well known for starring as the villain Julius No in the first James Bond film, Dr. No in 1962. Wiseman was also known for his role as Manny Weisbord on the TV series Crime Story, and his career on Broadway. He was once called "the spookiest actor in the American theatre."

Larry H. Miller was an American businessman from Utah. He owned the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s Utah Jazz and of the Salt Lake Bees, a Minor League Baseball team. Miller and his companies also owned more than 60 automotive dealerships throughout the western United States, and a variety of other ventures, including Prestige Financial Services, Jordan Commons, Megaplex Theatres, KJZZ-TV, Miller Motorsports Park, the advertising agency Saxton Horne, and Vivint Smart Home Arena. The Fanzz chain of sports apparel stores was also owned by LHM Group until its sale to Ames Watson Capital in 2018.

Benjamín "Benji" Franklin LeBarón Ray was an anti-crime activist and community leader in a Colonia LeBarón community, Galeana, Chihuahua, Mexico, who had founded the advocacy group SOS Chihuahua. LeBarón, a citizen of both Mexico and the United States, was murdered, along with his brother-in-law, Luis Carlos "Wiso" Widmar Stubbs, aged 29, on 7 July 2009, by a group of assailants.

Richard Masato Aoki was an American educator and college counselor, best known as a civil rights activist and early member of the Black Panther Party. He joined the early Black Panther Party and was eventually promoted to the position of Field Marshal. Although there were several Asian Americans in the Black Panther Party, Aoki was the only one to have a formal leadership position. Following Aoki's death, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's records on him were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, showing that, over a period of 15 years, he had been an informant for the government.

Ertuğrul Osman, also known as Osman Ertuğrul Osmanoğlu with a surname as required by the Turkish Republic, was an Imperial Prince of the Ottoman Empire and the 43rd Head of the Imperial House of Osman from 1994 until his death. Had the Ottoman Empire not been dissolved and succeeded by the Republic of Turkey, he would have become caliph and Sultan Osman V. He was also known as Sultan Ertuğrul II in reference to Ertuğrul, the father of Osman I.