List of Famous people who died in 2012

Metin Kurt was a Turkish former football manager and footballer who played as a winger. He was nicknamed Çizgi Metin because he drew opponents towards him when he played. Kurt spent most of his career in the Turkish Süper Lig, and is best known for his stint with Galatasaray where he won three consecutive Süper Lig titles.

Isuzu Yamada was a Japanese actress whose career on stage and screen spanned eight decades.

Valeri Ivanovich Vasiliev was a Russian ice hockey defenceman, who competed for the USSR. An eight-time Soviet all-star, Vasiliev was captain of the national team, for which he played 13 years. Born in Gorky, Soviet Union, he played for HC Dynamo Moscow.

Vera Nikolaevna Kublanovskaya was a Russian mathematician noted for her work on developing computational methods for solving spectral problems of algebra. She proposed the QR algorithm for computing eigenvalues and eigenvectors in 1961, which has been named as one of the ten most important algorithms of the twentieth century. This algorithm was proposed independently by the English computer scientist John G.F. Francis in 1959.

Fyodor Savelyevich Khitruk was a Soviet and Russian animator and animation director.

José Luis Álvarez Enparantza, better known by his pseudonym Txillardegi, was a Spanish linguist, politician and writer. Born in San Sebastián, he did not learn Basque until the age of 17, but came to be considered one of the most influential figures in Basque nationalism and culture in the second half of the 20th century. He was one of the founders of ETA.

Wilhelm Brasse was a Polish professional photographer and a prisoner in Auschwitz during World War II. He became known as the "famous photographer of Auschwitz concentration camp." His life and work were the subject of the 2005 Polish television documentary film The Portraitist (Portrecista), which first aired in the Proud to Present series on the Polish TVP1 on 1 January 2006.

Claude Pinoteau was a French film director and scriptwriter. Born in Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts de Seine, Île-de-France, France. He died in Neuilly-sur-Seine, aged 87. His sister was the actress Arlette Merry.

Michael Shawn Bernardo was a South African kickboxer and boxer from Cape Town. Bernardo was known as Beru-chan in Japan, where he has taken part in K-1 World GPs since 1994. He holds notable wins over Mirko Cro Cop, Andy Hug, Francisco Filho, Branko Cikatic, Stan Longinidis and three consecutive wins over K-1 legend Peter Aerts.

Aleksandr Nikolaevich Yefimov was a senior military officer who served as Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Air Force from 1984 to 1990. Earlier in his life, he had been an Il-2 pilot for which he was twice awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union.