Famous People Who Died in January a to z

Director, producer and playwright George Abbott lived to be 107 and participated in such Broadway productions as Boy Meets Girl, The Fall Guy and Our Town.

Joy Adamson was a conservationist who pioneered the movement to preserve African wildlife. She won renown with her books about raising the lion cub Elsa.

Robert Adamson was a Scottish chemist and photographer who is best known for producing 2500 Calotype photographic prints with painter David Octavius Hill.

Maria Gaetana Agnesi is best known for writing the first book discussing integral and differential calculus.

Momofuku Ando was the founder of Nissin Food Products Company and the inventor of instant noodles.

Singer and entertainer Patty Andrews was the youngest member of the trio the Andrews Sisters, one of America's most popular musical groups of the 1930s and '40s.

Anne of Austria, queen consort of France, was married to the 14-year-old Louis XIII and later mothered Louis XIV.

Ellen Arthur was the wife of Chester A. Arthur, but died just before he became vice president in 1881, and before James Garfield's assassination would have made her first lady.

John James Audubon was an American ornithologist, artist and naturalist known for his studies, drawings and paintings of North American birds.

Isaak Babel was a Russian writer of Jewish descent known for his masterful short stories. He was imprisoned and executed in the Stalin era.

Johann Christian Bach was a galant-style German composer of Italian opera during the early Classical period, and the youngest son of famed Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach.

Conrad Bain was a Canadian-American actor best known for his role as Philip Drummond on the hit show Diff'rent Strokes.

Social activist and pacifist Emily Greene Balch won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946 for being a lifetime advocate of the persecuted and oppressed.

George Bancroft was known as the "father of U.S. history." His work, History of the United States, was the first comprehensive study of U.S. History.

Ma Barker is best known for supposedly leading the criminal behavior of her four sons.

Jean-Louis Barrault was a French actor director, and mime. He is best known for his role in the film The Children of Paradise (1945).

John Barry was a British film composer best known for his memorable work on James Bond films.

Edith Bouvier Beale ("Little Edie") was an eccentric cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. She became a cult figure and fashion icon after her appearance in the documentary Grey Gardens.

James Beard was a chef, television personality and food writer who many consider the father of American-style gourmet cooking.

Sir Cecil Beaton was an English fashion photographer who is also known for his work as a diarist, interior designer, and Oscar-winning stage and costume designer.

Alva Belmont was a wealthy socialite who used her fortune to advance the women's rights movement of the early 1900s.

Thomas Hart Benton was an esteemed 20th century painter and muralist renowned for works like “America Today” and “Persephone.”

A two-time French prime minister, Georges Bidault was active in the French Resistance during World War II but later fled France after a dispute with de Gaulle.

Nellie Bly was an American journalist known for her investigative and undercover reporting. She earned acclaim in 1887 for her exposé on the conditions of patients at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, and achieved further fame after the New York World sent her on a trip around the world in 1889.

Actor Humphrey Bogart became a legend for his roles in 1940s-era films like Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon and To Have and Have Not.

Musician and politician Sonny Bono was once wed to singer Cher and in 1994 was elected to U.S. Congress as a representative from California.

Louis Braille was a French educator who developed the Braille system of printing and writing for the blind.

Christian Brando was the eldest son of Hollywood legend Marlon Brando. He was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for killing his half-sister’s boyfriend.

Russian-born American poet Joseph Brodsky was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987 for his important lyric and elegiac poems.

American clergyman Phillips Brooks, ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1860, is best known for authoring the Christmas carol "O Little Town of Bethlehem."

Blues Singer Charles Brown belonged to John Moore’s Three Blazers and gained fame when the band released “Driftin’ Blues.”

Charlotte Hawkins Brown was a teacher and founder of the Palmer Memorial Institute, a trailblazing Southern prep school for African-American students.

African-American poet Sterling Brown is best known for writing poetry distinctly rooted in folklore and authentic black dialect. His works, including Southern Road (1932), have been widely praised for their authenticity and phonetic spelling.

Art Buchwald is known for writing humor columns for Paris newspaper The Herald Tribune, and for winning a Pulitzer Prize for Outstanding Commentary in 1982.

American serial killer and rapist Ted Bundy was one of the most notorious criminals of the late 20th century.

Sammy Cahn was a U.S. lyricist who composed songs for romantic films and Broadway musicals, including the hit "Three Coins in the Fountain" (1954, Oscar).

James Mark Cameron was a respected and prominent British journalist who reported widely and illuminatingly on poverty, war, injustice.

Algerian born writer Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize for literature in part due to his embrace of existentialism in books like The Stranger.

A child from an Italian immigrant family, Al Capone (a.k.a. 'Scarface') rose to infamy as the leader of the Chicago mafia during the Prohibition era.

Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles L. Dodgson, author of the children's classics "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass."

One of television's best known personalities, Johnny Carson hosted "The Tonight Show" for 30 years. His farewell show in 1992 drew 50 million viewers.

George Washington Carver was a prominent African-American scientist and inventor. Carver is best known for the many uses he devised for the peanut.

Ted Cassidy was a 6’9” American actor known for his work in The Addams Family TV series and the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

With her trademark suits and little black dresses, fashion designer Coco Chanel created timeless designs that are still popular today.

Charlemagne was the founder of the Carolingian Empire, best known for uniting Western Europe for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire.

Shirley Chisholm was the first black congresswoman, and the first African-American woman to make a bid for the U.S. Presidency.

Agatha Christie was a mystery writer who was one of the world's top-selling authors with works like Murder on the Orient Express and The Mystery of the Blue Train.

As prime minister, Sir Winston Churchill rallied the British people during WWII, and led his country from the brink of defeat to victory.

Samuel Colt was an inventor and industrialist who created the revolver—most notably the .45-calibre Peacemaker model, which was introduced in 1873—and paved the way for the interchangeable parts system of manufacturing.

Calvin Coolidge was president of the United States from 1923 to 1929. Coolidge was known for his quiet demeanor, which earned him the nickname "Silent Cal."

As head principal of the Institute for Colored Youth, Fanny Coppin innovated a practice-teaching system and an elaborate industrial-training department.

Nicknamed "the Black Dahlia," Elizabeth Short was brutally murdered in Los Angeles in 1947, her body cut in half and severely mutilated. The Black Dahlia's killer was never found, making her murder one of the oldest cold case files in L.A. to date, and the city's most famous.

Salvador Dali is best known for his long surrealist painting career.

Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton was a French naturalist who introduced Merino sheep to France.

France's Louis de Funès was a celebrated comedic actor of stage and film known for roles like Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez and La Grande Vadrouille.

French painter Georges La Tour is considered a major influence on Caravaggio for his use of simple lighting, like candles, in a realistic manner.

Actress Yvonne De Carlo was Moses' wife in DeMille's The Ten Commandments, but is better known for playing the matriarch on TV's The Munsters.

Abolitionist Martin Robison Delany was both a physician and newspaper editor, and became one of the most influential and successful anti-slavery activists of the 19th century.

Cecil B. DeMille was an actor, director and producer who became a giant of the 20th century film industry, known for epics like The Ten Commandments.

Director and producer Ted Demme created Yo! MTV Raps, and worked on the films Beautiful Girls, Life and Blow.

James Dickey was a Poet Laureate and novelist best known for his 1970 book Deliverance.

Denny Doherty was an original member of the 1960s harmonizing rock group the Mamas and the Papas.

William O. Douglas was a government official who in 1939 became the second youngest Supreme Court justice in U.S. history.

English admiral Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe in 1577-1578, helped defeat the Spanish Armada and was the most renowned seaman of the Elizabethan era.

Jimmy Durante was an American comedian whose career in every major entertainment performance medium spanned more than six decades.

Amelia Earhart, the first female pilot to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, mysteriously disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean in 1937.

Wyatt Earp was a frontiersman, marshal and gambler. After moving to Tombstone, Arizona, he got into a feud, which ended in a gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

T.S. Eliot was an American-born English poet, playwright, and literary critic, arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century.