List of Famous people who died in 2009

Rear Admiral James Frederick Thomas George "Sam" Salt, was a senior Royal Navy officer of the late twentieth century. He was the captain of HMS Sheffield during the Falklands War, the first British warship to be sunk by enemy action since the end of the Second World War.

Panapasa Balekana, MBE, SIM, was a Fijian-born Solomon Islander who composed the national anthem of the Solomon Islands, God Save Our Solomon Islands, with his wife, Matila Balekana. Panapasa Balekana co-wrote the anthem's lyrics with his wife while he composed the accompanying music.

Adolf Endler was a lyric poet, essayist and prose author who played a central role in subcultural activities that attacked and challenged an outdated model of socialist realism in the German Democratic Republic up until the collapse of communism in the early 1990s. Endler drew attention to himself as the "father of the oppositional literary scene" at Prenzlauer Berg in the eastern part of Berlin. In 2005 he was made a member of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung in Darmstadt.

Ayatollah Abdul Aziz al-Hakim was an Iraqi theologian and politician and the leader of Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a party that has approximately 5% support in the Iraqi Council of Representatives. He also served as the President of the Governing Council of Iraq

Jacques Chessex was a Swiss author and painter.

Gilles Carle, was a French Canadian director, screenwriter and painter.

James Oliver Charles FitzRoy, Earl of Euston FCA was the eldest child of the 11th Duke of Grafton and his wife Fortune.

Paul Anthony Samuelson was an American economist. The first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, the Swedish Royal Academies stated, when awarding the prize in 1970, that he "has done more than any other contemporary economist to raise the level of scientific analysis in economic theory". Economic historian Randall E. Parker has called him the "Father of Modern Economics", and The New York Times considered him to be the "foremost academic economist of the 20th century".

Shlomo Shamir was the third Commander of the Israeli Navy (1949–1950), and the first Israeli Navy Commander to receive the rank of Aluf. He was the third Commander of the Israeli Air Force (1950–1951).