List of Famous people who died in 2017

John Surtees, was an English Grand Prix motorcycle road racer and Formula One driver. He was a four-time 500 cc motorcycle World Champion – winning that title in 1956, 1958, 1959 and 1960 – the Formula One World Champion in 1964, and remains the only person to have won World Championships on both two and four wheels. He founded the Surtees Racing Organisation team that competed as a constructor in Formula One, Formula 2 and Formula 5000 from 1970 to 1978. He was also the ambassador of the Racing Steps Foundation.

Steven D. McDonald was a New York City Police Department (NYPD) patrolman who was shot and paralyzed on July 12, 1986. The shooting left him quadriplegic.

Roger LaVerne Smith was an American television and film actor, producer and screenwriter. He starred in the television detective series 77 Sunset Strip and in the comedy series Mister Roberts. Smith went on to manage the career of Ann-Margret, his wife of 50 years.

Grant Vernon Hart was an American musician, best known as the drummer and co-songwriter for the punk rock band Hüsker Dü. After the band's breakup in 1988, he released his first solo album Intolerance before forming the alternative rock trio Nova Mob, where he moved to vocals and guitar. His solo career became his main focus after the dissolution of Nova Mob in 1997.

Edith "Edie" Windsor was an American LGBT rights activist and a technology manager at IBM. She was the lead plaintiff in the 2013 Supreme Court of the United States case United States v. Windsor, which overturned Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act and was considered a landmark legal victory for the same-sex marriage movement in the United States. The Obama Administration and federal agencies extended rights, privileges and benefits to married same-sex couples because of the decision.

Sheila Abdus-Salaam was an American lawyer and judge. In 2013, after having served on the New York City Civil Court, the New York Supreme Court, and the Appellate Division, Abdus-Salaam was nominated to the New York Court of Appeals and was unanimously confirmed as an Associate Judge by the New York State Senate. She was the first African-American female judge to serve on the New York Court of Appeals.

Dina Wadia was the daughter and only child of the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and his wife, Rattanbai Petit. She belonged to the prominent Jinnah family through her father, the Petit family through her mother, and to the Wadia family through her marriage to Neville Wadia.

James Howard Vance III was an American television news presenter in Washington, D.C.

James Paul David Bunning was an American professional baseball pitcher and politician who represented Kentucky in both chambers of the United States Congress. He is the sole Major League Baseball athlete to have been elected to both the United States Senate and the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Bruce Hampton was an American musician. In the late 1960s he was a founding member of Atlanta, Georgia's avant-garde Hampton Grease Band. Adopting the moniker Colonel Hampton B. Coles, Retired or alternatively Col. Bruce Hampton Ret., and sometimes playing a sort of dwarf guitar called a "chazoid", he later formed several other bands. Some of those band names include The Late Bronze Age, The Aquarium Rescue Unit, The Fiji Mariners, The Codetalkers, The Quark Alliance, Pharaoh Gummitt, and Madrid Express.