List of Famous people who died in 2012

Josef Grünbeck was a German politician of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and former member of the German Bundestag.

Leon Schlumpf was a Swiss politician and a former member of the Swiss Federal Council (1979-1987).

Mark O’Donnell was an American writer and humorist.

Jean François-Poncet was a French politician and diplomat who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs under President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing from 1978 to 1981. From 1983 until 2011, he was a member of the Senate for Lot-et-Garonne.

Barry Unsworth FRSL was an English writer known for his historical fiction. He published 17 novels, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, winning once for the 1992 novel Sacred Hunger.

Sam Youd, known professionally as Christopher Samuel Youd, was a British writer, best known for science fiction under the pseudonym John Christopher, including the novels The Death of Grass, The Possessors, and the young-adult novel series The Tripods. He won the Guardian Prize in 1971 and the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1976.

Robert Steven Ledley, professor of physiology and biophysics and professor of radiology at Georgetown University School of Medicine, pioneered the use of electronic digital computers in biology and medicine. In 1959, he wrote two influential articles in Science: "Reasoning Foundations of Medical Diagnosis" and "Digital Electronic Computers in Biomedical Science". Both articles encouraged biomedical researchers and physicians to adopt computer technology. In 1960 he established the National Biomedical Research Foundation (NBRF), a non-profit research organization dedicated to promoting the use of computers and electronic equipment in biomedical research. At the NBRF Ledley pursued several major projects: the early 1960s development of the Film Input to Digital Automatic Computer (FIDAC), which automated the analysis of chromosomes; the invention of the Automatic Computerized Transverse Axial (ACTA) whole-body CT scanner in the mid-1970s; managing the Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure ; and the establishment of the Protein Information Resource in 1984. Ledley also served as editor of several major peer-reviewed biomedical journals. In 1990, Ledley was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 1997. He retired as president and research director of the NBRF in 2010.