The following is a list of notable deaths in February 1990.

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.

February 1990

1

• Gianfranco Contini, 78, Italian academic and philologist.^[1]
• Lauritz Falk, 80, Swedish-Norwegian actor.
• Peter Racine Fricker, 69, English composer, throat cancer.^[2]
• Hassan Ibrahim, 73, Egyptian Air Force officer.
• Yeghishe Derderian of Jerusalem, 78, Israeli Armenian patriarch (since 1960), heart attack.^[3]
• Jadwiga Wajs, 78, Polish Olympic discus thrower (1932, 1936).

2

• Kathleen Hamilton, Duchess of Abercorn, 84, British Mistress of the Robes (since 1964).
• Paul Ariste, 84, Soviet linguist.
• Paul Arzens, 86, French industrial automotive designer.^[4]
• Benedict Daswa, 43, South African educator, beaten to death.
• Enrico De Pedis, 35, Italian gangster, homicide.
• Joel Fluellen, 82, American actor, suicide by gunshot.^[5]
• Mel Lewis, 60, American drummer, skin cancer.^[6]
• Sigbjørn Bernhoft Osa, 79, Norwegian fiddler.^[7]
• Hans Schumm, 93, German-American actor, heart failure.^[8]
• Don Welsh, 78, English football player.^[9]

3

• Erv Kantlehner, 97, American baseball player.^[10]
• Willibald Kirbes, 87, Austrian football player.
• Jane Novak, 94, American actress, stroke.
• Pa Tepaeru Terito Ariki, 66, Cook Islander lyricist ("Te Atua Mou E").
• Marcel Thévenet, 74, French weightlifter and Olympian.^[11]

4

• Zé Beto, 29, Portuguese footballer, traffic collision.
• Jean Galloway Bissell, 53, American judge, cancer.^[12]
• Leonard J. Fick, 74, American academic, heart disease.
• Maria Gambarelli, 89, Italian-American actress and dancer.^[13]
• Berta Karlik, 86, Austrian physicist.
• Archibald Ross Lewis, 75, American historian.^[14]
• Kate Simon, 77, Polish-American writer.^[15]
• Whipper Billy Watson, 72, Canadian wrestler and trainer.

5

• W. W. Bartley III, 55, American philosopher, bladder cancer.^[16]
• Edgar Herschler, 71, American politician, governor of Wyoming (1975–1987), cancer.
• Père Marie-Benoît, 94, French humanitarian.^[17]
• Joseph Mauclair, 83, French road bicycle racer from 1927 to 1938.^[18]
• Joseph J. Nazzaro, 76, American Air Force general, cancer.^[19]
• King Perry, 75, American musician.

6

• Bin Akao, 91, Japanese politician, heart failure.^[20]
• Jeannine Auboyer, 77, French museum curator.^[21]
• Bernard Bernstein, 81, American economist, cardiac arrest.^[22]
• John Merivale, 72, Canadian-British actor, kidney failure.^[23]
• Jimmy Van Heusen, 77, American composer, complications from a stroke.^[24]

7

• Thomas Clark, 83, American Olympic rower (1932).^[25]
• Tony Fomison, 50, New Zealand artist.^[26]
• Max Koecher, 66, German mathematician.
• Alan Perlis, 67, American computer scientist, heart attack.^[27]
• Alfredo M. Santos, 84, Filipino general.

8

• Rhys Adrian, 61, British playwright and screenwriter.
• Bernice Carey, 78-79, American mystery writer.^[28]
• Cassius Marcellus Clay Sr., 77, American painter and musician, father of Muhammad Ali, heart attack.^[29]
• George de Mestral, 82, Swiss electrical engineer and inventor of velcro.
• Xu Deheng, 99, Chinese politician.
• Katalin Karády, 79, Hungarian actress and singer.^[30]
• Pete Kmetovic, 70, American football player.^[31]
• Charles Maclean, Baron Maclean, 73, British hereditary peer.
• Del Shannon, 55, American musician, suicide by gunshot.^[32]
• Ernest William Titterton, 73, British nuclear physicist, pulmonary embolism.

9

• James Fleming Gordon, 71, American judge.^[33]
• Ilse Hollweg, 67, German opera singer.
• Saroj Mukherjee, 79, Indian freedom fighter and politician.
• John Poelker, 76, American politician.
• Jan Wojnowski, 43, Polish weightlifter and Olympian.^[34]

10

• Clara González, 88, Panamanian feminist, judge, and activist.^[35]
• Knut Hansson, 78, Swedish footballer.^[36]
• Luigi Musina, 75, Italian boxer.
• John Arthur Pilcher, 77, British diplomat.
• Bill Sherwood, 37, American musician and filmmaker, AIDS.^[37]
• Tony Solaita, 43, American baseball player, shot.^[38]

11

• Léopold Anoul, 67, Belgian football player.
• Tom Brennan, 59, American basketball player.^[39]
• Marie-Dominique Chenu, 95, French theologian.^[40]
• Enrique Kistenmacher, 66, Argentine Olympic athlete (1948).^[41]
• Colin Henderson Roberts, 80, British classical scholar.^[42]

12

• Joseph Peter Michael Denning, 83, American Roman Catholic prelate.^[43]
• Erling Enger, 90, Norwegian painter.
• Harold McCusker, 50, Northern Irish politician, cancer.^[44]
• Victor Pokrovsky, 92, Russian choir director, translator, and music arranger.
• Nenad Radulović, 30, Yugoslav singer, testicular cancer.

13

• Binyomin Beinush Finkel, 78-79, Soviet-Israeli rabbi.
• Angela Gregory, 86, American sculptor.
• Heinz Haber, 76, German physicist.
• Manuel Rodriguez Lopez, 55, Galician poet and writer.^[45]
• Ken Lynch, 79, American actor, viral illness.^[46]
• Leon Stein, 77-78, American writer.^[47]

14

• Armistead L. Boothe, 82, American politician.^[48]
• Michel Drach, 59, French filmmaker.^[49]
• Graeme Hole, 59, Australian cricketer, cancer.^[50]
• Tony Holiday, 38, German singer, AIDS.
• Slick Johnson, 41, American racing driver, racing collision.
• Dick Martin, 62, American artist.^[51]
• José Luis Panizo, 68, Spanish footballer.^[52]
• John M. Robsion, Jr., 85, American politician, member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1953–1959).
• Fritz Schulz-Reichel, 77, German pianist.
• Jean Wallace, 66, American actress, gastrointestinal bleeding.^[53]
• Luděk Čajka, 26, Czechoslovak ice hockey player, spinal cord injury.

15

• Keyes Beech, 76, American journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner.
• Henry Brandon, 77, German-American actor, heart attack.^[54]
• George Daney, 43, American football player, carbon monoxide poisoning.^[55]
• Dolores Faith, 48, American actress, suicide.
• Ulf Johanson, 68, Swedish actor.
• Frans Kellendonk, 39, Dutch novelist, AIDS.^[56]
• Dorival Knippel, 72, Brazilian footballer.^[57]
• Jack C. Massey, 85, American businessman, pneumonia.^[58]
• Norman Parkinson, 76, English photographer.^[59]
• Rudolf Schaad, 88, Russian-German film editor.^[60]

16

• John Eastaugh, 69, British Anglican prelate.
• Keith Haring, 31, American artist, AIDS.^[61]
• Nurul Momen, 81, Bangladeshi playwright.
• Luis Ortiz Monasterio, 83, Mexican sculptor.^[62]
• József Moravetz, 79, Romanian football player.
• Tadanari Okamoto, 58, Japanese animator.
• Volodymyr Scherbytsky, 71, Soviet and Ukrainian politician, pneumonia.
• Joshua Shelley, 70, American actor.^[63]
• J. C. Trewin, 81, British journalist.^[64]

17

• Robert Bernard, 76, German footballer.^[65]
• Jean-Marc Boivin, 38, French mountaineer, extreme sports person, film maker, and author , BASE jumping accident.^[66]
• Brendan Corish, 71, Irish politician.^[67]
• Larry Cox, 42, American baseball player, heart attack.^[68]
• Hap Day, 88, Canadian ice hockey player.^[69]
• Dino Falconi, 87, Italian screenwriter and film director.
• Erik Rhodes, 84, American actor, pneumonia.^[70]
• Allen Rivkin, 86, American screenwriter.^[71]
• Hans Speier, 85, German-American sociologist.^[72]

18

• Günther Bornkamm, 84, German theologian.^[73]
• Herman Carlson, 83, Swedish ice hockey player.^[74]
• Margaret Craske, 97, British ballet dancer and choreographer.^[75]
• Richard de Zoysa, 31, Sri Lankan journalist, human rights activist and actor, shot.
• Joe Erskine, 56, Welsh boxer.
• Tor Isedal, 65, Swedish actor.
• Frank Ross, 85, American filmmaker, complications from brain surgery.^[76]

19

• Edris Rice-Wray Carson, 86, American medical researcher.
• Ernest Cole, 49, South African photographer, cancer.^[77]
• Gabriel Katzka, 59, American theater, film and television producer, heart attack.^[78]
• Francis Keppel, 73, American educator.^[79]
• Laura Spencer-Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, 74, British socialite.
• Otto E. Neugebauer, 90, Austrian-American mathematician and science historian.^[80]
• Janusz Paluszkiewicz, 77, Polish actor.
• Michael Powell, 84, English filmmaker, cancer.^[81]
• Abdul Matin Chowdhury, Shaikh-e-Fulbari, 74-75, Bangladeshi religious scholar.
• Massey H. Shepherd, 76, American priest and scholar.^[82]
• William White, 69, Scottish cricketer. field hockey player and Olympic silver medalist.^[83]

20

• Sergio Camargo, 59, Brazilian sculptor and relief maker.
• Cecil Garriott, 73, American baseball player.^[84]
• Harry Klinefelter, 77, American physician.
• Verdina Shlonsky, 85, Russian-Israeli musician.^[85]

21

• Zohrabai Ambalewali, 71-72, Indian singer.
• Johnny Borland, 64, New Zealand athletics official.
• Juanita Larrauri, 79, Argentine singer and politician.
• Isaac Jacob Schoenberg, 86, Romanian-American mathematician.^[86]
• Vincent Teresa, 59–60, American mobster (Patriarca crime family), kidney failure.^[87]

22

• Stephen W. Burns, 35, American actor, AIDS.
• T. O. Honiball, 85, South African cartoonist.^[88]
• Andrew Jarvis, 99, Greek-American politician and businessman.
• Victor Lasky, 72, American writer.^[89]
• Evald Seepere, 78, Soviet/Estonian boxer.

23

• Amritlal, 73, Indian writer.^[90]
• Arne Bang-Hansen, 78, Norwegian actor.^[91]
• José Napoleón Duarte, 64, Salvadoran politician, president (1984–1989), stomach cancer.
• James M. Gavin, 82, American general.^[92]
• Stan Hough, 71, American film producer.^[93]
• Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, 37-38, Pakistani cleric, murdered.
• David Samoylov, 69, Russian poet.^[94]
• Annelien Kappeyne van de Coppello, 53, Dutch politician, cancer.^[95]

24

• Arthur Ayrault, 55, American Olympic rower (1956, 1960).^[96]
• Tony Conigliaro, 45, American baseball player, kidney failure.^[97]
• Malcolm Forbes, 70, American politician and publisher (Forbes), heart attack.^[98]
• Lloyd Jordan, 89, American sports player and coach.
• Jure Kaštelan, 70, Yugoslav poet.
• Arch Nicholson, 48, Australian film director, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
• Sandro Pertini, 93, Italian politician, president (1978–1985).^[99]
• Johnnie Ray, 63, American singer ("Cry"), liver failure.^[100]
• Gabriel Sempé, 88, French Olympic hurdler (1924, 1928).^[101]
• Darryl Usher, 25, American football player, shot.^[102]

25

• André de Korver, 74, Dutch racing cyclist.^[103]
• Henry Fairlie, 66, British political journalist.^[104]
• Estelle Peck Ishigo, 90, American artist and author.^[105]
• Ingrid Larsen, 80, Danish chess player.

26

• Lew Erber, 55, American gridiron football coach.^[106]
• Julian Gascoigne, 86, British general.
• Cornell Gunter, 53, American singer, shot.^[107]
• Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, 97, American heiress and publisher (The New York Times).^[108]
• Margot Walle, 68, Norwegian Olympic skater (1948).^[109]

27

• Les Ames, 84, English cricket player.^[110]
• Johannes Draaijer, 26, Dutch racing driver, heart block, heart attack.
• Vern Freiburger, 66, American baseball player.^[111]
• Alberto Mario Giustolisi, 61, Italian chess player.
• Nahum Norbert Glatzer, 86, Austrian-American historian and philosopher.^[112]
• Josephine Johnson, 79, American novelist, pneumonia.^[113]
• Nguyễn Phúc Bửu Lộc, 75, Vietnamese politician, prime minister (1954).
• Alexandru Rosetti, 94, Romanian linguist, accident.^[114]

28

• Erik Anderberg, 98, Swedish naval admiral.
• Jack Conroy, 90, American leftist writer.^[115]
• Mario Craveri, 87, Italian filmmaker.^[116]
• Sylvia del Villard, 62, Puerto Rican actress and dancer.
• Fabia Drake, 86, British actress.^[117]
• Kornel Filipowicz, 76, Polish writer, lung cancer.
• Russell Jacquet, 72, American trumpeter, heart attack.^[118]
• Colin Milburn, 48, English cricketer, heart attack.
• Wallace Reid Jr., 72, American actor, plane crash.
• John O'Sullivan, 88, Irish politician.
• Tuppy Owen-Smith, 81, South African cricket player.
• David Prichard, 26, American guitarist, leukemia.^[119]
• Greville Wynne, 70, British engineer and intelligence officer, esophageal cancer.^[120]