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
- Sir Victor Crutchley, British admiral (b. 1893)
- L. Ron Hubbard, American writer and founder of Scientology (b. 1911) [1]
- 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 6 – Minoru Yamasaki, Japanese architect, designed the twin towers of the World Trade Center (b. 1912)
- February 7 – 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 composer (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
- Helen Hooven Santmyer, American writer (b. 1895)
- 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 ballet dancer 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)
- Jole Bovio Marconi, Italian archaeologist and prehistorian (b. 1897)
- 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 22 – Georgie Nokes, American child actor (b. 1936)
- 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
- 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)
- Joseph Vogt, German classical historian (d. 1895)
- July 18
- Buddy Baer, American boxer and actor (b. 1915)
- Sir 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 23 – Kazimierz Sikorski, Polish composer (d. 1895)
- 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 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) [2]
- August 26 – Ted Knight, American actor (b. 1923)
- August 27 – George Nēpia, New Zealand Maori rugby player (b. 1905)
- August 31
- Jorge Alessandri, Chilean engineer, entrepreneur and politician, 27th President of Chile (b. 1896)
- Urho Kekkonen, Finnish politician, 21st Prime Minister of Finland and 8th President of Finland (b. 1900)
- Henry Moore, British sculptor (b. 1898)
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 4 – Alexei Fofanov, Soviet major and Hero of the Soviet Union
- 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 Georg 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)
