The following is a list of notable deaths in October 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.

October 1990

1

• John Stewart Bell, 62, Northern Irish physicist, cerebral hemorrhage.^[1]
• Edmund George Irving, 80, British hydrographer.
• Andrzej Krzanowski, 39, Polish composer.^[2]
• Augustin Laurent, 94, French politician.^[3]
• Curtis LeMay, 83, American general, heart attack.^[4]
• Russell Thacher, 71, American film producer (Soylent Green), complications from surgery.^[5]
• Tommy Thompson, 63, American football player, cancer.^[6]

2

• Peter Herman Adler, 90, Austrian-born American conductor.^[7]
• Xosé María Díaz Castro, 76, Galician poet and translator.^[8]
• John Groff, 100, American general, heart attack.^[9]
• Loni Nest, 75, German actress.^[10]
• Isolina Rondón, 77, Puerto Rican nationalist.
• Fred Rwigyema, 33, Rwandan soldier, shot.
• Heinie Schuble, 83, American baseball player.^[11]
• Mercedes Simone, 86, Argentinian singer and actress.
• Norbert Vesak, 53, Canadian choreographer, brain aneurysm.^[12]

3

• Winslow Ames, 83, American art historian, heart attack.^[13]
• Amy Bailey, 94, Jamaican civil rights activist.
• Charlotte Boyle, 91, American swimmer.^[14]
• Stefano Casiraghi, 30, Italian powerboat racer, boating accident.
• Res Jost, 72, Swiss theoretical physicist.^[15]
• Eleanor Steber, 76, American opera singer, complications from heart surgery.^[16]

4

• Alyn Ainsworth, 66, British musician.
• Jill Bennett, 58, English actress, drug overdose.^[17]
• Avis Bunnage, 67, English actress.^[18]
• Erwin Bünning, 84, German biologist, Alzheimer's disease.
• Luciano Catenacci, 57, Italian actor.
• Roy Charman, 60, English sound engineer.
• Jacques de Mahieu, 74, French-Argentine anthropologist and peronist.
• Vance Dinges, 75, American baseball player.^[19]
• Sergey Lapin, 78, Soviet diplomat.
• František Nekolný, 82, Czechoslovak boxer.^[20]
• Waldemar Philippi, 61, German footballer.^[21]
• Ray Stephens, 35, American singer (Village People) and actor (The Great Space Coaster), AIDS.
• Peter Taylor, 62, English football player, lung disease.

5

• Félix Dafauce, 93, Spanish actor.
• André Grabar, 94, Ukrainian-American art historian.^[22]
• Dixie Howell, 70, American baseball player.^[23]
• Yoshio Kondo, 80, American Biologist and malacologist.
• J. Murray Mitchell, 62, American climatologist.^[24]
• Sam Taylor, 74, American saxophonist.^[25]
• Ramkumar Verma, 85, Hindi poet.^[26]
• Đorđe Vujadinović, 80, Yugoslav football player.
• Jan Hendrik Waszink, 81, Dutch Latin scholar.^[27]

6

• Märta Dorff, 81, Swedish film actress.^[28]
• Asser Fagerström, 78, Finnish pianist, composer and actor.
• James E. Newcom, 85, American film editor.
• Danny Rodriguez, 22, American Christian rapper, shot.^[29]
• Richard P. Ross Jr., 84, American general.
• Henryk Vogelfanger, 86, Polish actor.
• Bahriye Üçok, 70-71, Turkish politician and journalist, assassinated.

7

• Chiara Badano, 18, Italian Catholic activist, osteosarcoma, bone cancer.^[30]
• Bellarmino Bagatti, 84, Italian archaeologist.^[31]
• Darrel Brown, 67, American basketball player.^[32]
• Beatrice Hutton, 97, Australian architect.
• Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, 78, Emirati politician, prime minister (since 1979).^[33]
• Scott M. Matheson, 61, American politician, governor of Utah (1977–1985), multiple myeloma.^[34]
• Grim Natwick, 100, American animator (Fleischer Studios), pneumonia.^[35]
• Manuel Ramos Otero, 42, Puerto Rican writer, AIDS.

8

• Juan José Arévalo, 86, Guatemalan politician, president (1945–1951).^[36]
• Frank Cope, 74, American football player.^[37]
• William Henry Harrison III, 94, American politician, member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1951–1955, 1961–1965, 1967–1969), heart failure.
• William James Jameson, 92, American judge.^[38]
• Jimmy Mills, 96, Scottish-American footballer.
• Robert F. Murphy, 66, American anthropologist, heart failure.^[39]
• Kamalapati Tripathi, 85, Indian politician.
• Eric Wennström, 81, Swedish hurdler.^[40]
• B.J. Wilson, 43, English drummer, pneumonia.

9

• Mildred Bayer, 81, American humanitarian.
• Murray Bowen, 77, American psychologist.^[41]
• John Brooks, 80, American Olympic long jumper (1936).^[42]
• Georges de Rham, 87, Swiss mathematician.^[43]
• Dessie Grew, 37, Irish Provisional IRA volunteer, shot.
• Markku Hakulinen, 34, Finnish ice hockey player, suicide by train collision.^[44]
• Martin McCaughey, 23, Irish Provisional IRA volunteer, shot.
• Richard Murdoch, 83, English actor.^[45]
• Arnold Olsen, 73, American politician, member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1961–1971).^[46]
• Géza Ottlik, 78, Hungarian writer and mathematician.^[47]
• Boris Paichadze, 75, Soviet footballer.^[48]
• Lars Thörn, 86, Swedish sailor.^[49]

10

• Kenneth Cross (physiologist), 74, British physiologist.
• Emil Josef Diemer, 82, German chess player.^[50]
• Walter Hammersen, 79, German politician.
• Dick Jorgensen, 56, American football official, cancer.^[51]
• Irene Mayer Selznick, 83, American theatrical producer, breast cancer.^[52]
• Jerónimo Mihura, 88, Spanish film director.^[53]
• Wally Moses, 80, American baseball player.^[54]
• Tom Murton, 62, American prison warden, cancer.
• Floyd R. Newman, 99, American oil businessman.^[55]
• Barbara Boggs Sigmund, 51, American politician, cancer.^[56]
• Edward Szostak, 79, Polish basketball player.^[57]
• Carlos Thompson, 67, Argentine actor, suicide by gunshot.^[58]
• Josef Trousílek, 72, Czechoslovak ice hockey player.^[59]

11

• Ichio Asukata, 75, Japanese politician.^[60]
• Anatole Broyard, 70, American writer and journalist, prostate cancer.^[61]
• George Corbett, 82, American football player.^[62]
• Günter Kuhnke, 78, German submarine commander.
• Ken Spain, 44, American basketball player, cancer.^[63]
• Robert Tessier, 56, American actor, cancer.
• Adri van Male, 80, Dutch footballer.^[64]

12

• Rifaat el-Mahgoub, 64, Egyptian politician, shot.
• Leonard Krieger, 72, American historian.^[65]
• Leif Larsen, 84, Norwegian sailor.
• Rahman Morina, 47, Yugoslav politician, heart attack.
• John O'Brien, 65, New Zealand politician.
• Frederick Rossini, 91, American thermodynamicist.
• Bridget Bate Tichenor, 72, British surrealist painter and fashion editor.^[66]
• Peter Wessel Zapffe, 90, Norwegian philosopher.

13

• Lino Donoso, 68, Cuban baseball player.^[67]
• Douglas Edwards, 73, American newscaster, bladder cancer.^[68]
• Hans Freudenthal, 85, German-born Dutch mathematician.^[69]
• Hans Namuth, 75, German-American photographer, traffic collision.^[70]
• Le Duc Tho, 78, Vietnamese politician and diplomat, Nobel Prize recipient (1973), cancer.^[71]
• Lewis Veraldi, 60, American automotive engineer, heart attack.^[72]

14

• Leonard Bernstein, 72, American conductor and composer (West Side Story), pneumonia.^[73]
• Tom Brigance, 77, American fashion designer.
• Leon Brown, 71, American basketball player.^[74]
• Daniel Guilet, 91, French-American violinist, cerebral hemorrhage.^[75]
• Irina Odoyevtseva, 95, Russian poet, novelist and memoirist.^[76]
• Clifton Pugh, 65, Australian artist, heart attack.^[77]
• Carin Swensson, 85, Swedish actress.

15

• Tibor Berczelly, 78, Hungarian Olympic fencer (1936, 1948, 1952).^[78]
• Helen Bray, 100, American silent film actress.^[79]
• Sam Dolgoff, 88, Russian-American anarchist.^[80]
• Wilhelm Magnus, 83, German-American mathematician.^[81]
• David McCalden, 39, British-American far-right activist, AIDS.^[82]
• William Edwin Minshall, Jr., 78, American politician, member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1955–1974).^[83]
• Gwen Nelson, 89, English actress.
• Yu Pingbo, 90, Chinese literary critic.
• Boris Piotrovsky, 82, Soviet archaeologist.^[84]
• Delphine Seyrig, 58, French actress, ovarian cancer.^[85]
• Om Shivpuri, 52, Indian actor, heart attack.
• Vital Van Landeghem, 77, Belgian football player.

16

• Art Blakey, 71, American drummer, lung cancer.^[86]
• Jorge Bolet, 75, Cuban-American pianist, AIDS-related complications.^[87]
• Douglas Campbell, 94, American flying ace during World War I.^[88]
• Dorothy M. Healy, 76, American historian.
• Berl Huffman, 83, American sports coach.
• Carl Just, 93, Norwegian journalist.
• Blake Pelly, 83, Australian politician and businessman.
• Roger Powell, 94, English bookbinder.^[89]
• Giovanni Varglien, 79, Italian footballer.^[90]
• Alexander Zakin, 87, Russian-American pianist, heart failure.^[91]

17

• Ralph Bowman, 79, Canadian ice hockey player.^[92]
• Denis Cordner, 66, Australian footballer.
• Harry Fletcher, 80, Australian politician.
• Seth Morgan, 41, American novelist, traffic collision.^[93]
• Jordan Olivar, 75, American football player, cancer.^[94]
• Tadashige Ono, 81, Japanese artist.
• Paul Seabury, 67, American political scientist, kidney failure.^[95]

18

• Michael Bigg, 50, English-Canadian marine biologist, leukemia.
• Marie-France Dufour, 41, French singer, leukemia.
• Nick Etten, 77, American baseball player.^[96]
• Pyotr Fedoseyev, 82, Soviet philosopher.
• Sol Furth, 83, American Olympic jumper (1932).^[97]
• Sir Ben Lockspeiser, 99, British scientific administrator (CERN).
• Harry Marker, 91, American film editor.
• Heinz Oskar Vetter, 72, German politician.

19

• Jerry Cronin, 65, Irish politician, Parkinson's disease.
• Haim Gvati, 89, Zionist activist and Israeli politician.
• René Highway, 35, Canadian dancer, AIDS.
• Augusto Tiezzi, 80, Italian cinematographer.
• Samuel Wilbert Tucker, 77, American lawyer.^[98]
• Lew Worsham, 73, American golfer.^[99]

20

• Colette Audry, 84, French writer.^[100]
• Américo Hoss, 74, Hungarian-Argentine cinematographer.
• Freda Jackson, 82, English actress.^[101]
• Alma Theodora Lee, 78, Australian botanist and plant taxonomist.
• Joel McCrea, 84, American actor, pneumonia.^[102]
• Kona Prabhakara Rao, 74, Indian politician, cardiopulmonary failure.

21

• Karl Egil Aubert, 66, Norwegian mathematician.^[103]
• Tom Carvel, 84, Greek-American businessman.^[104]
• Dany Chamoun, 56, Lebanese politician, murdered.
• Eugen Haugland, 78, Norwegian triple jumper and Olympian.^[105]
• Jo Ann Kelly, 46, English musician, brain cancer.^[106]
• Lotar Olias, 76, German composer.^[107]
• Brij Sadanah, 57, Indian filmmaker, suicide by gunshot.
• Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar, 69, Indian composer and guru, heart attack.^[108]
• Athol Shmith, 76, Australian photographer.
• Ruth Stockton, 74, American politician.
• Frank Waddey, 85, American baseball player.^[109]

22

• Louis Althusser, 72, French philosopher, heart attack.^[110]
• Kamil Lhoták, 78, Czechoslovak artist.^[111]
• Nikolay Rybnikov, 59, Soviet and Russian film actor, heart attack.^[112]
• Frank Sinkwich, 70, American football player.^[113]

23

• Norman Buchan, 67, British politician.
• P. K. Kelkar, 81, Indian scientist.
• Berthold Lubetkin, 88, Georgian-British architect.^[114]
• Zephania Mothopeng, 77, South African political activist, lung cancer.
• Dave Murray, 37, Canadian skier and Olympian, skin cancer.^[115]
• Thomas Williams, 63, American novelist, lung cancer.^[116]

24

• André Aumerle, 83, French cyclist.^[117]
• Jim Clark, 63, American baseball player.^[118]
• Boris Maluev, 61, Soviet and Russian painter.
• John Sex, 34, American singer, AIDS.
• Richard Tyler, 62, American sound engineer.

25

• Ed Bagdon, 64, American football player.^[119]
• Major Holley, 66, American bassist, heart attack.^[120]
• Zara Mints, 63, Soviet literary scientist.
• Bennie Oosterbaan, 84, American football player.^[121]
• Alberto da Costa Pereira, 60, Portuguese footballer.^[122]
• Ikey Robinson, 86, American banjoist.^[123]
• Williamson A. Sangma, 71, Indian politician.

26

• Lawrence Andreasen, 44, American diver, accidental fall.^[124]
• Robert Antelme, 73, French writer.
• Joan Brown, 52, American painter, blunt force trauma, accident.^[125]
• Arne Dagfin Dahl, 96, Norwegian soldier.
• Guillermo Garcia Gonzales, 36, Cuban chess Grandmaster, traffic collision.
• Breandán Ó hEithir, 60, Irish writer and broadcaster.
• Ödön Lendvay, 47, Hungarian basketball player.^[126]
• William S. Paley, 89, American television executive, kidney failure.^[127]
• Johnny Sanders, 68, American football executive, heart failure.^[128]
• Harry Wilson, 88, American multi-athlete.

27

• Chet Adams, 75, American football player.
• Rafael Banquells, 73, Cuban-Mexican actor, director and TV producer.
• Xavier Cugat, 90, Spanish musician, heart failure.^[129]
• Jacques Demy, 59, French film director and lyricist, AIDS.^[130]
• Princess Sophie of Hohenberg, 89, Austrian noble, daughter of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.
• Wacław Kowalski, 74, Polish actor.^[131]
• Elliott Roosevelt, 80, American general and politician, son of Franklin D. Roosevelt, heart failure.^[132]
• Ugo Tognazzi, 68, Italian actor and filmmaker, cerebral hemorrhage.^[133]
• Béla Volentik, 82, Hungarian football player.

28

• Aleksandra Chudina, 66, Soviet athlete, stomach cancer.^[134]
• Ernst Rudolf Huber, 87, German jurist.^[135]
• Kolau Nadiradze, 95, Soviet poet.
• Geminio Ognio, 72, Italian Olympic water polo player (1948, 1952).^[136]
• Robert Jan Verbelen, 79, Belgian nazi collaborator during World War II.

29

• Aleksei Alelyukhin, 70, Soviet flying ace during World War II.
• Joseph Attles, 87, American actor.^[137]
• Herbert Brodkin, 77, American producer and director of film and television.^[138]
• Emrys Roberts, 80, Welsh politician.
• William French Smith, 73, American lawyer, attorney general (1981–1985), cancer.^[139]
• Juha Vainio, 52, Finnish musician, heart attack.
• Volker von Collande, 76, German actor and filmmaker.^[140]

30

• Wim Gijsen, 57, Dutch author.^[141]
• Willy Jürissen, 78, German football player.
• Harry Lauter, 76, American actor, heart attack.
• Vinod Mehra, 45, Indian actor, heart attack.
• Craig Russell, 42, Canadian drag queen and actor, AIDS.^[142]
• Alfred Sauvy, 92, French demographer.^[143]
• V. Shantaram, 88, Indian actor and filmmaker.^[144]
• Tom Steele, 81, American stuntman.
• Piroska Szekrényessy, 74, Hungarian pair skater and Olympian.^[145]
• Kwok Tak-Seng, 79, Hong Kong businessman, heart attack.^[146]
• Germaine Van Dievoet, 91, Belgian swimmer.^[147]

31

• Carl Belew, 59, American country musician, cancer.^[148]
• Harold Caccia, Baron Caccia, 84, British diplomat.^[149]
• Jim Foster, 55, American LGBT activist, AIDS.
• Aya Kōda, 86, Japanese novelist, heart attack.
• Hugh McPhillips, 70, American actor and television director, traffic collision.
• Roger Price, 72, American humorist and author.^[150]
• M. L. Vasanthakumari, 62, Indian singer, cancer.^[151]