Notable Deaths on April 2

Hasan ibn Ali was the eldest son of Ali and Fatima, the elder brother of Husayn, and the eldest grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He briefly ruled as caliph from January to August 661 and is the second Imam in Shia Islam, succeeding his father Ali and preceding his brother Husayn. Hasan is a prominent member of the Ahl al-Bayt and the Ahl al-Kisa, and a participant in the Event of the Mubahala. Muhammad described Hasan and Husayn as the leaders of the youth of paradise. Hasan is traditionally described as having had the closest resemblance to the Prophet Muhammad.

Franz Halder was a German general and the chief of staff of the Army High Command (OKH) in Nazi Germany from 1938 until September 1942. During World War II, he directed the planning and implementation of Operation Barbarossa, the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. Halder became instrumental in the radicalisation of warfare on the Eastern Front. He had his staff draft both the Commissar Order and the Barbarossa decree that allowed German soldiers to execute Soviet citizens for any reason without fear of later prosecution, leading to numerous war crimes and atrocities during the campaign. After the war, he played a decisive role in the development of the myth of the clean Wehrmacht.

Zewditu was Empress of Ethiopia from 1916 until her death in 1930. She officially adopted the regnal name "Zewditu" at the beginning of her reign, which was triggered by the dethroning of Lij Iyasu in 1916. Her coronation was held on February 11, 1917, in the Cathedral of St. George in Addis Ababa—a capital founded by her father. Forty years old and childless when crowned, she is the first and only empress regnant of the Ethiopian Empire. Described as the first modern female head of a nation in Africa, she was the last female Ethiopian head of state until the 2018 election of Sahle-Work Zewde as president. Her reign, which she is said to have closely patterned after the legacy of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, is noted for the reforms of her Regent and heir apparent Ras Tafari Makonnen – changes which she was at best ambivalent and often stridently opposed to, due to her staunch conservatism and strong religiosity.

Robert Harold Schuller was an American Christian televangelist, pastor, motivational speaker, and author. Over five decades, Schuller pastored his church in Garden Grove, California starting in 1955. The weekly broadcast of Hour of Power television program followed began in 1970, and he led until his retirement in 2006. His grandson, Bobby Schuller, carries on the Hour of Power, which has aired for over fifty years. During his time as a minister, Schuller oversaw the construction of two churches in Garden Grove, California. The first church built under his tenure was the Garden Grove Community Church chapel which seated 500, and the second was the much larger Crystal Cathedral, which has a capacity of 2,200.

Manoel Cândido Pinto de Oliveira was a Portuguese film director and screenwriter born in Cedofeita, Porto. He first began making films in 1927, when he and some friends attempted to make a film about World War I. In 1931, he completed his first film Douro, Faina Fluvial, a documentary about his home city Porto made in the city-symphony genre. He made his feature film debut in 1942 with Aniki-Bóbó and continued to make shorts and documentaries for the next 30 years, gaining a minimal amount of recognition without being considered a major filmmaker.

Elizabeth Catlett, born as Alice Elizabeth Catlett, also known as Elizabeth Catlett Mora was an American and Mexican sculptor and graphic artist best known for her depictions of the Black-American experience in the 20th century, which often focused on the female experience. She was born and raised in Washington, D.C., to parents working in education, and was the grandchild of formerly enslaved people. It was difficult for a black woman then to pursue a career as a working artist. Catlett devoted much of her career to teaching. However, a fellowship awarded to her in 1946 allowed her to travel to Mexico City, where she settled and worked with the Taller de Gráfica Popular for twenty years and became head of the sculpture department for the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas. In the 1950s, her main means of artistic expression shifted from print to sculpture, though she never gave up the former.

Lawrence Lucchino was an American lawyer and Major League Baseball executive. He served as president of the Baltimore Orioles, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of the San Diego Padres, and president and CEO of the Boston Red Sox. He was also chairman of the Worcester Red Sox, the Triple-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox; chairman of The Jimmy Fund, the philanthropic arm of the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute; and president and CEO emeritus of Fenway Sports Group, the parent company of the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool F.C. Lucchino played college basketball for the Princeton Tigers.

Clifford Everett "Bud" Shank Jr. was an American alto saxophonist and flutist. He rose to prominence in the late 1940s into early 1950s playing lead alto and flute in Stan Kenton's Innovations in Modern Music Orchestra. In 1951, he left Kenton and worked as sideman in various small jazz combos, most notably Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All-Stars, before forming his own group. He spent the 1960s as a first-call studio musician in Hollywood. In the 1970s and 1980s, he performed regularly with the L. A. Four. Shank ultimately abandoned the flute to focus exclusively on playing jazz on the alto saxophone in the late 1980s. He also recorded on tenor and baritone sax. His most famous recording is probably the version of "Harlem Nocturne" used as the theme song in Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer. He is also known for the soundtrack recordings with his group to the surfing films of Bruce Brown in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and for the alto flute solo on the song "California Dreamin'" recorded by the Mamas & the Papas in 1965.

Paul Johann Ludwig von Heyse was a German writer and translator. A member of two important literary societies, the Tunnel über der Spree in Berlin and Die Krokodile in Munich, he wrote novels, poetry, 177 short stories, and about sixty dramas. The sum of Heyse's many and varied productions made him a dominant figure among German men of letters. He was awarded the 1910 Nobel Prize in Literature "as a tribute to the consummate artistry, permeated with idealism, which he has demonstrated during his long productive career as a lyric poet, dramatist, novelist and writer of world-renowned short stories." Wirsen, one of the Nobel judges, said that "Germany has not had a greater literary genius since Goethe." Heyse is the fifth oldest laureate in literature, after Alice Munro, Jaroslav Seifert, Theodor Mommsen and Doris Lessing.

Joseph Dudley was a colonial administrator, a native of Roxbury in Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the son of one of its founders. He had a leading role in the administration of the Dominion of New England (1686–1689), which was overthrown in the 1689 Boston revolt. He served briefly on the council of the Province of New York, from which he oversaw the trial which convicted Jacob Leisler, the ringleader of Leisler's Rebellion. He then spent eight years in England in the 1690s as Lieutenant-Governor of the Isle of Wight, including one year as a Member of Parliament for Newtown. In 1702, he returned to New England after being appointed governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay and Province of New Hampshire, posts that he held until 1715.

Hannes Olof Gösta Alfvén was a Swedish electrical engineer, plasma physicist and winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). He described the class of MHD waves now known as Alfvén waves. He was originally trained as an electrical power engineer and later moved to research and teaching in the fields of plasma physics and electrical engineering. Alfvén made many contributions to plasma physics, including theories describing the behavior of aurorae, the Van Allen radiation belts, the effect of magnetic storms on the Earth's magnetic field, the terrestrial magnetosphere, and the dynamics of plasmas in the Milky Way galaxy.

Richard was an English prince who was King of the Romans from 1257 until his death in 1272. He was the second son of John, King of England, and Isabella, Countess of Angoulême. Richard was nominal Count of Poitou from 1225 to 1243, and he also held the title Earl of Cornwall from 1225. He was one of the wealthiest men in Europe and joined the Barons' Crusade, where he achieved success as a negotiator for the release of prisoners and assisted with the building of the citadel in Ascalon.

John Simmons Barth was an American writer best known for his postmodern and metafictional fiction. His most highly regarded and influential works were published in the 1960s, and include The Sot-Weed Factor, a whimsical retelling of Maryland's colonial history; Giles Goat-Boy, a satirical fantasy in which a university is a microcosm of the Cold War world; and Lost in the Funhouse, a self-referential and experimental collection of short stories. He was co-recipient of the National Book Award in 1973 for his episodic novel Chimera.

Mauricio Leib Lasansky was an Argentine artist and educator known both for his advanced techniques in intaglio printmaking and for a series of 33 pencil drawings from the 1960s titled "The Nazi Drawings." Lasansky, who migrated to and became a citizen of the United States, established the program in printmaking at the University of Iowa, which offered the first Master of Fine Arts program in the field in the United States. Sotheby's identifies him as one of the fathers of modern printmaking.

Ahmed Vefik Pasha was an Ottoman statesman, diplomat, scholar, playwright, and translator during the Tanzimat and First Constitutional Era periods. He was commissioned with top-rank governmental duties, including presiding over the first Ottoman Parliament in 1877. He also served as Prime Minister for two brief periods. He also established the first Ottoman theatre and initiated the first Western style theatre plays in Bursa and translated Molière's major works into Turkish. His portrait was depicted on the Turkish postcard stamp dated 1966.

Albert Pike was an American author, poet, orator, editor, lawyer, jurist and Confederate States Army general who served as an associate justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court in exile from 1864 to 1865. He had previously served as a senior officer of the Confederate States Army, commanding the District of Indian Territory in the Trans-Mississippi Theater. A prominent member of the Freemasons, Pike served as the Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council, Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction from 1859 to 1891.

Baldwin I was the first count of Edessa from 1098 to 1100 and king of Jerusalem from 1100 to his death in 1118. He was the youngest son of Count Eustace II of Boulogne and Ida of Lorraine and married a Norman noblewoman, Godehilde of Tosny. He received the County of Verdun in 1096, but he soon joined the crusader army of his brother Godfrey of Bouillon and became one of the most successful commanders of the First Crusade.

Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus Latinized as Ludovicus Henricus Bojanus was a Franco-German physician, comparative anatomist, and naturalist who spent most of his active career teaching veterinary medicine at Vilnius University in Vilnius, then within the Russian Empire. His greatest work was a two-volume folio on the anatomy of the turtle Emys orbicularis published in 1819 and 1821. The Organ of Bojanus of molluscs is named after him. The Triassic mammal Lisowicia bojani was named in his honour in 2019.

Colonel Kumar Sri Sir Ranjitsinhji Vibhaji II, often known as Ranji or K. S. Ranjitsinhji, was an Indian cricketer who later became ruler of his native Indian princely state of Nawanagar, from 1907 to 1933. The main part of his cricket career was from 1893 to 1904 when, as one of the greatest batsmen of his time, he played for Cambridge University, Sussex, London County and, in 15 Test matches, for England.