Deaths in 1986


The following is a list of notable deaths in 1986. Entries for each day are listed alphabetically by surname. A typical entry lists information in the following sequence:
 Name, age, country of citizenship at birth, subsequent country of citizenship (if applicable), reason for notability, cause of death (if known), and reference. Deaths in 1986

January

 January 4
 Christopher Isherwood, English writer (b. 1904)
 Phil Lynott, Irish musician, lead singer and bassist (Thin Lizzy) (b. 1949)
 January 5 – Ilmari Salminen, Finnish Olympic athlete (b. 1902)
 January 6 – Una Merkel, American actress (b. 1903)
 January 7 – Juan Rulfo, Mexican writer (b. 1917)
 January 10 – Jaroslav Seifert, Czech writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1901)
 January 12 – Juan Carlos Corazzo, Uruguayan football player (b. 1907)
 January 13 – Abdul Fattah Ismail, Leader of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen) (b. 1939)
 January 14 – Donna Reed, American actress (b. 1921)
 January 16 – Herbert W. Armstrong, founded the Worldwide Church of God (b. 1892)
 January 17 – Abdul Majid Kubar, 4th Prime Minister of Libya (b. 1909)
 January 23 – Willard Van Dyke, American filmmaker and photographer (b. 1906)
 January 24
 Victor Crutchley, British admiral (b. 1893)
 L. Ron Hubbard, American writer and founder of Scientology (b. 1911)
 Gordon MacRae, American actor and singer (b. 1921)
 January 27
 Nikhil Banerjee, Indian classical sitarist (b. 1931)
 Lilli Palmer, German actress (b. 1914)
 January 28 – In the Challenger disaster:
 Gregory Jarvis, American astronaut (b. 1944)
 Christa McAuliffe, American astronaut and teacher (b. 1948)
 Ronald McNair, American astronaut (b. 1950)
 Ellison Onizuka, American astronaut (b. 1946)
 Judith Resnik, American astronaut (b. 1949)
 Dick Scobee, American astronaut (b. 1939)
 Michael J. Smith, American astronaut (b. 1945)
 January 29 – Leif Erickson, American actor (b. 1911)

February

 February 1
 Alva Myrdal, Swedish politician, diplomat, and writer, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1902)
 Ida Rhodes, American mathematician, pioneer in computer programming (b. 1900)
 February 7
 Minoru Yamasaki, Japanese architect, designed the twin towers of the World Trade Center (b. 1912)
 Cheikh Anta Diop, Senegalese historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician (b. 1923)
 February 10 – Brian Aherne, British actor (b. 1902)
 February 11 – Frank Herbert, American author (b. 1920)
 February 14 – Edmund Rubbra, British composer (b. 1901)
 February 16 – Howard da Silva, American actor (b. 1909)
 February 17
 Jiddu Krishnamurti, Indian philosopher (b. 1895)
 Paul Stewart, American actor (b. 1908)
 February 19 
 Francisco Mignone, Brazilian classical music (b. 1897)
 Barry Seal, American smuggler of drugs and arms, aircraft pilot, and money launderer and former Trans Worlds Airlines pilot (b. 1939)
 Adolfo Celi, Italian actor and director (b. 1922)
 February 20 – Bert Schneider, Canadian boxer (b. 1897)
 February 21 – Mart Stam, Dutch architect (b. 1899)
 February 24 – Tommy Douglas, Canadian politician and "Father of medicare" in Canada (b. 1904)
 February 25 – Pasquale Festa Campanile, Italian screenwriter, film director and novelist (b. 1927)
 February 27 – Jacques Plante, Canadian hockey player (b. 1929)
 February 28 – Olof Palme, Swedish politician, 26th Prime Minister of Sweden (b. 1927)

March

 March 4
 Richard Manuel, Canadian musician (The Band) (b. 1943)
 Howard Greenfield, American songwriter (b. 1936)
 March 6
 Adolph Caesar, American actor (b. 1933)
 Georgia O'Keeffe, American artist (b. 1887)
 Zhu Guangqian, Chinese esthetician, modern literary theorist, and famous scholar (b.1897)
 March 10 – Ray Milland, Welsh-American actor and director (b. 1907)
 March 13 – Eugen Gerstenmaier, German politician, 20 July Plotter (b. 1906)
 March 15 – Miguel Darío Miranda y Gómez, Mexican Roman Catholic archbishop and cardinal (b. 1895)
 March 17 – John Bagot Glubb, British soldier (b. 1897)
 March 18 – Bernard Malamud, American writer (b. 1914)
 March 19 – Jon Lormer, American actor (b. 1906)
 March 22
 Charles Starrett, American actor (b. 1903)
 Martin Harlinghausen, German air force general (b. 1902)
 March 23
 Moshe Feinstein, Orthodox rabbi (b. 1895)
 Anastasia Zuyeva, Soviet actress (b. 1896)
 March 24 – Michael, Prince of Montenegro (b. 1908)
 March 28 – Virginia Gilmore, American actress (b. 1919)
 March 29 – Harry Ritz, American actor (b. 1907)
 March 30 – James Cagney, American actor and dancer (b. 1899)
 March 31 – Jerry Paris, American actor and director (b. 1925)

April

 April 1 – Erik Bruhn, Danish danseur and choreographer (b. 1928)
 April 3 – Sir Peter Pears, English tenor (b. 1910)
 April 7 – Leonid Kantorovich, Russian economist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1912)
 April 8 – Yukiko Okada, Japanese idol singer (b. 1967)
 April 14 – Simone de Beauvoir, French feminist writer (b. 1908)
 April 15
 Jean Genet, French writer (b. 1910)
 Tim McIntire, American actor (b. 1944)
 Robert Marjolin, French economist and politician, 1st Secretary-General of the OECD (b. 1911)
 April 17
 Paul Costello, American Olympic rower – double sculls (b. 1894)
 Marcel Dassault, French aircraft industrialist (b. 1892)
 Bessie Head, South African writer (b. 1937)
 April 19 – Alvin Childress, American actor (b. 1907)
 April 20 – Aleksei Arbuzov, Soviet playwright (b. 1908)
 April 21 – Teodoro Casana Robles, Peruvian lawyer, historian, journalist, archaeologist, photographer and geographer (b. 1900)
 April 22 – Mircea Eliade, Romanian historian of religions and writer (b. 1907)
 April 23
 Harold Arlen, American music composer (b. 1905)
 Jim Laker, English cricketer (b. 1922)
 Otto Preminger, Austrian-American film director (b. 1905)
 April 24 – The Duchess of Windsor (b. 1896)
 April 26
 Broderick Crawford, American actor (b. 1911)
 Bessie Love, American actress (b. 1898)
 Hermann Gmeiner, Austrian educator (b. 1919)
 Valery Khodemchuk, Soviet engineer, working at Chernobyl reactor 4 (b. 1951)
 April 27 – J. Allen Hynek, American ufologist (b. 1910)
 April 30 – Robert Stevenson, English film director (b. 1905)

May

 May 2 – Henri Toivonen, Finnish rally car driver (b. 1956)
 May 3 – Robert Alda, American actor (b. 1914)
 May 7 – Herma Szabo, Austrian figure skater (b. 1902)
 May 9
 Herschel Bernardi, American actor (b. 1923)
 Tenzing Norgay, Nepalese sherpa (b. 1914)
 May 11
 Vladimir Pravik, Soviet firefighter (b. 1962)
 Aleksandr Akimov, Soviet engineer who was the shift supervisor during the events of the Chernobyl disaster (b. 1953)
 May 12
 Elisabeth Bergner, Austrian actress (b. 1897)
 Alicia Moreau de Justo, Argentine physician, politician, pacifist and human rights activist (b. 1885)
 May 13 – Vasily Ignatenko, Soviet firefighter who responded to the Chernobyl disaster (b. 1961)
 May 15
 Elio de Angelis, Italian race car driver (b. 1958)
 Theodore White, American writer (b. 1915)
 May 20 – Helen B. Taussig, American cardiologist (b. 1898)
 May 23
 Sterling Hayden, American actor (b. 1916)
 Altiero Spinelli, Italian political theorist and European federalist (b. 1907)
 May 24 – Yakima Canutt, American actor and stuntman (b. 1895)
 May 25 – Chester Bowles, American politician (b. 1901)
 May 26 – Gian-Carlo Coppola, American film producer (b. 1963)
 May 28 – Lurene Tuttle, American actress (b. 1907)
 May 30 – Perry Ellis, American fashion designer (b. 1940)
 May 31 – James Rainwater, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1917)

June

 June 3 – Dame Anna Neagle, English actress (b. 1904)
 June 5 – Bryan Grant, American tennis champion (b. 1909)
 June 11 – Chesley Bonestell, American painter (b. 1888)
 June 13 – Benny Goodman, American jazz musician (b. 1909)
 June 14
 Alan Jay Lerner, American lyricist (b. 1918)
 Jorge Luis Borges, Argentine writer (b. 1899)
 June 16 – Maurice Duruflé, French composer (b. 1902)
 June 17 – Kate Smith, American singer (b. 1907)
 June 19
 Len Bias, American basketball player (b. 1963)
 Coluche, stage name of Michel Colucci, French comedian and humorist (b. 1944)
 June 23 – Sir Moses Finley, British classicist (b. 1912)
 June 26 – Kunio Maekawa, Japanese architect (b. 1905)
 June 27 – Don Rogers, American football player (b. 1962)
 June 28 – Mary Anderson, American actress (b. 1897)

July

 July 3 – Rudy Vallée, American singer, actor, and bandleader (b. 1901)
 July 4 – Oscar Zariski, Russian mathematician (b. 1899)
 July 6 – Jagjivan Ram, Indian politician (b. 1908)
 July 8 – Hyman G. Rickover, American admiral (b. 1900)
 July 14 – Raymond Loewy, French-American industrial designer (b. 1893)
 July 18
 Buddy Baer, American boxer and actor (b. 1915)
 Stanley Rous, English administrator, 6th President of FIFA (b. 1895)
 July 19 – Alfredo Binda, Italian cyclist (b. 1902)
 July 22 – Floyd Gottfredson, American cartoonist (b. 1905)
 July 24
 Fritz Albert Lipmann, American biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1899)
 Yoshiyuki Tsuruta, Japanese Olympic swimmer (b. 1903)
 July 25
 Ted Lyons, American baseball player (Chicago White Sox) and member of the MLB Hall of Fame (b. 1900)
 Vincente Minnelli, American film director (b. 1903)
 July 26 – W. Averell Harriman, American diplomat and politician (b. 1891)
 July 31
 Patriarch Iustin of Romania (b. 1910)
 Teddy Wilson, American jazz pianist (b. 1912)
 Chiune Sugihara, Japanese diplomat and humanitarian who saved Jewish WWII refugees (b. 1900)

August

 August 2 – Roy Cohn, American lawyer (b. 1927)
 August 6 – Emilio Fernández, Mexican film director, actor and screenwriter (b. 1904)
 August 11 – Chuck McKinley, American tennis champion (b. 1941)
 August 18 – Harun Babunagari, Bangladeshi Islamic scholar and educationist (b. 1902)
 August 19 – Hermione Baddeley, British actress (b. 1906)
 August 20 – Thad Jones, American jazz musician (b. 1923)
 August 22 – Celâl Bayar, Turkish politician, 3rd Prime Minister of Turkey and President of Turkey (b. 1883)
 August 23 – Mikhail Kuznetsov, Soviet actor (b. 1918)
 August 24 – Harry Benjamin, American endocrinologist and sexologist (b. 1885)
 August 26 – Ted Knight, American actor (b. 1923)
 August 27 – George Nēpia, New Zealand Maori rugby player (b. 1905)
 August 31
 Henry Moore, British sculptor (b. 1898)
 Urho Kekkonen, Finnish politician, 21st Prime Minister of Finland and 8th President of Finland (b. 1900)
 Jorge Alessandri, Chilean engineer, entrepreneur and politician, 27th President of Chile (b. 1896)

September

 September 1 – Murray Hamilton, American actor (b. 1923)
 September 3 – Vittorino Veronese, Italian lawyer and international servant, 4th Director-General of UNESCO (b. 1910)
 September 4 – Hank Greenberg, American baseball player and member of the MLB Hall of Fame (b. 1911)
 September 6 – Blanche Sweet, American actress (b. 1896)
 September 7 – Omar Ali Saifuddien III, Sultan of Brunei (b. 1914)
 September 11
 Jacques Henri Lartigue, French painter (b. 1894)
 Panagiotis Kanellopoulos, Greek author and politician, 164th Prime Minister of Greece (b. 1902)
 Henry DeWolf Smyth, American physicist (b. 1898)
 September 18 – Pat Phoenix, English actress (b. 1923)
 September 22 – József Asbóth, Hungarian tennis champion (b. 1917)
 September 23 – Gottfried Freiherr von Banfield, Austro-Hungarian naval aeroplane pilot in the First World War (b. 1890)
 September 25 – Nikolay Semyonov, Russian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1896)
 September 26 – Noboru Terada, Japanese Olympic swimmer (b. 1917)
 September 27 – Cliff Burton, American musician and songwriter (b. 1962)
 September 28 – Robert Helpmann, Australian actor, dancer and choreographer (b. 1909)
 September 29 – Prince George Valdemar of Denmark (b. 1920)

October

 October 4 – Arno von Lenski, German military officer and general (b. 1893)
 October 5
 Hal B. Wallis, American film producer (b. 1898)
 James H. Wilkinson, British mathematician (b. 1919)
 October 10 – Michele Pellegrino, Italian Roman Catholic cardinal (b. 1903)
 October 11 – Georges Dumézil, French philologist and historian (b. 1898)
 October 14 – Keenan Wynn, American actor (b. 1916)
 October 16 – Arthur Grumiaux, Belgian violinist (b. 1921)
 October 19 – Samora Machel, Mozambican military commander, politician and revolutionary, 1st President of Mozambique (b. 1933)
 October 21 – Fritz Hochwälder, Austrian author (b. 1911)
 October 22 – Albert Szent-Györgyi, Hungarian physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1893)
 October 23 – Edward Adelbert Doisy, American biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1893)
 October 25 – Forrest Tucker, American actor (b. 1919)
 October 26 – Jackson Scholz, American Olympic athlete (b. 1897)
 October 28 – Ian Marter, English actor and writer (b. 1944)
 October 31 – Robert S. Mulliken, American physicist and chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (b. 1896)

November

 November 2 – Paul Frees, American actor, comedian (b. 1920)
 November 4 – Abdallah El-Yafi, Lebanese politician, 9th Prime Minister of Lebanon (b. 1901)
 November 5 – Claude Jutra, Canadian film director (b. 1930)
 November 6 – Elisabeth Grümmer, Alsatian soprano (b. 1911)
 November 7 - Tracy Pew Australian musician (b. 1957)
 November 8
 Artur London, Czech statesman (b. 1915)
 Vyacheslav Molotov, Soviet politician (b. 1890)
 November 11 – Roger C. Carmel, American actor (b. 1932)
 November 15 – Alexandre Tansman, French composer and virtuoso pianist (b. 1897)
 November 16 – Siobhán McKenna, Irish actress (b. 1923)
 November 18 – Gia Carangi, American supermodel (b. 1960)
 November 21
 Jerry Colonna, American comedian (b. 1904)
 Dar Robinson, American stunt performer and actor (b. 1947)
 November 22
 Scatman Crothers, American actor, musician (b. 1910)
 Dinny Pails, Australian tennis player (b. 1921)
 November 29 – Cary Grant, English actor (b. 1904)

December

 December 2 – Desi Arnaz, Cuban-American actor, bandleader, musician and television producer (b. 1917)
 December 8 – Anatoly Marchenko, Soviet dissident and author (b. 1938)
 December 10 – Susan Cabot, American actress (b. 1927)
 December 12 – Paul Verner, German politician (b. 1911)
 December 13
 Heather Angel, British-American actress (b. 1909)
 Ella Baker, American civil rights activist (b. 1903)
 December 14 – Antal Páger, Hungarian actor (b. 1899)
 December 15 – Serge Lifar, Soviet dancer and choreographer (b. 1905)
 December 17
 Guillermo Cano Isaza, Colombian journalist (b. 1925)
 Wanis al-Qaddafi, Libyan politician, 10th Prime Minister of Libya (b. 1924)
 December 21 – Willy Coppens, Belgian pilot (b. 1892)
 December 24
 Gardner Fox, American writer (b. 1911)
 Richard van der Riet Woolley, English astronomer (b. 1906)
 December 26 – Elsa Lanchester, British-American actress (b. 1902)
 December 29
 Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1894)
 Pietro Parente, Italian Roman Catholic cardinal (b. 1891)
 Andrei Tarkovsky, Russian filmmaker, writer, and film theorist (b. 1932)

References

1986 deaths
Lists of deaths in 1986
Deaths in 1986