Notable Deaths on December 29

Thomas Becket, also known as Saint Thomas of Canterbury, Thomas of London and later Thomas à Becket, was an English cleric and statesman who served as Lord Chancellor from 1155 to 1162, and then as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 until his death in 1170. He is known for his conflict with King Henry II over the rights and privileges of the Church and was murdered by followers of the king. Becket is venerated as a saint and martyr by the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion.

Sarah Baartman, also spelled Sara, sometimes in the Dutch diminutive form Saartje, or Saartjie, and Bartman, Bartmann, was a Khoekhoe woman who was exhibited as a freak show attraction in 19th-century Europe under the name Hottentot Venus, a name that was later attributed to at least one other woman similarly exhibited. The women were exhibited for their steatopygic body type – uncommon in Northwestern Europe – that was perceived as a curiosity at that time, and became subject of scientific interest as well as of erotic projection.

Sir William Osler, 1st Baronet was a Canadian physician and one of the "Big Four" founding professors of Johns Hopkins Hospital. Osler created the first residency program for specialty training of physicians. He has frequently been described as the Father of Modern Medicine and one of the "greatest diagnosticians ever to wield a stethoscope". In addition to being a physician he was a bibliophile, historian, author, and renowned practical joker. He was passionate about medical libraries and medical history, having founded the History of Medicine Society, at the Royal Society of Medicine, London. He was also instrumental in founding the Medical Library Association of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Association of Medical Librarians along with three other people, including Margaret Charlton, the medical librarian of his alma mater, McGill University. He left his own large history of medicine library to McGill, where it became the Osler Library.

Neil James Innes was an English songwriter, writer, comedian and musician. He first came to prominence in the comedy rock group the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and later became a frequent collaborator with the Monty Python troupe on their BBC television series and films, and is often called the "seventh Python" along with performer Carol Cleveland. Along with Eric Idle of Monty Python, he co-created the Rutles, a Beatles parody/pastiche project; Innes wrote the band's songs. He also wrote and voiced the 1980s ITV children's cartoon adventures of The Raggy Dolls.

Spotted Elk was a Chief of the Miniconjou-Lakota-Sioux. He was a son of Lone Horn and became a Chief upon his father's death. He was a highly renowned Chief with skills in war and negotiations. Spotted Elk was also referred to as "Big Foot” Sí Tȟáŋk), a derisive name he obtained from an American soldier at Fort Bennett . In 1890, Spotted Elk was killed by the U.S. Army at Wounded Knee Creek, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation , South Dakota with at least 150 members of his tribe, during the infamous Wounded Knee Massacre.

Aaron Brown was an American broadcast journalist, most recognized for his coverage of the September 11 attacks for CNN. He was a longtime reporter for ABC, the founding co-anchor of ABC's World News Now, weekend anchor of World News Tonight, and the host of CNN's flagship evening program NewsNight with Aaron Brown. He was the anchor of the PBS documentary series Wide Angle from 2008 to 2009. He was a professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University from 2007 to 2014.

Miroslav Krleža was a Croatian writer, widely considered to be the greatest of the 20th century. He wrote notable works in several literary genres, including poetry, theater, short story collections, novels, and an intimate diary. His works often include themes of bourgeois hypocrisy and conformism in Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Krleža wrote numerous essays on problems of art, history, politics, literature, philosophy, and military strategy, and was known as one of the great polemicists of the century. His style combines visionary poetic language and sarcasm.

Edward Christopher Williams was the first African-American professionally trained librarian in the United States. His sudden death in 1929 ended his career the year he was expected to receive the first Ph.D. in librarianship. Williams was born on February 11, 1871, in Cleveland, Ohio, to an African-American father and an Irish mother. Upon his graduation with distinction from Adelbert College of Western Reserve University in 1892, he was appointed Assistant Librarian of Hatch Library at WRU. Two years later, he was promoted to librarian of Hatch Library until 1909, when he resigned to assume the responsibility of the Principal of M Street High School in Washington, D.C. He continued his career as University Librarian of Howard University until his death on December 24, 1929. Williams was rediscovered as a Harlem Renaissance author with the 2004 publication of his novel When Washington Was in Vogue, considered among the earliest epistolary novels by an African American.

Madeleine Pelletier was a French psychiatrist, first-wave feminist, and political activist. Born in Paris, Pelletier frequented socialist and anarchist groups in her adolescence. She became a doctor in her twenties, overcoming a large educational gap, and was France's first woman to receive a doctorate in psychiatry. Pelletier joined freemasonry, the French Section of the Workers' International, and came to lead a feminist association. She set out to join the October Revolution but returned disillusioned. In France, she continued to advocate for feminist and communist causes, and wrote numerous articles, essays, and literary works, even following a stroke in 1937 which made her hemiplegic. Pelletier was charged with having performed an abortion in 1939 despite her condition precluding her ability to perform this act. She was placed in a mental asylum where her health deteriorated and she died of a second stroke later that year.

Jagadish Mohanty was a renowned Odia writer, considered as a trendsetter in modern Odia fiction, has received the prestigious Sarala Award in 2003, Odisha Sahitya Akademi Award in 1990 for his novel Kanishka Kanishka, Dharitri Award in 1985, Jhankar Award, Prajatantra Award. Born in Gorumahisani, an iron-ore mines in northern periphery in Mayurbhanj district of Odisha, he spent more than 30 years of his life working in the Mahanadi Coalfields Limited(MCL) in western periphery of Odisha. Though he kept himself away from the cultural capital of Odisha, but still his writings highlighted him in the mainstream of Odia literature and culture.

Ralph Woodward Clanton was an American character actor of film, stage, and television. His most seen performance was Comte De Guiche in the 1950 film Cyrano de Bergerac, the first sound version in English of Edmond Rostand's play, and the film for which José Ferrer won his only Academy Award for Best Actor. Besides Ferrer as Cyrano, Clanton was the only holdover from the cast of the 1946 Broadway revival of the play, and would play the role of De Guiche opposite him once more, in a New York City Center production in 1953.

Samuel Henry Butcher DCL LLD was an Anglo-Irish writer and classical scholar. He was best known for his edition of Homer's Odyssey alongside fellow writer Andrew Lang, which they co-authored in 1879. His edition transformed The Odyssey into prose, similar to Samuel Butler's version in 1900. Although Butler's version is more popular today, Butcher and Lang's version was popular in its time. In addition to being a writer, he was a Professor of Greek at the University of Edinburgh and a politician.

Felix Edward Hébert was an American journalist and politician from Louisiana. He represented the New Orleans–based 1st congressional district as a Democrat for 18 consecutive terms, from 1941 until his retirement in 1977. He remains Louisiana's longest-serving U.S. representative. A contributor to and signatory of the pro-segregationist Southern Manifesto, he served on the United States House Committee on Armed Services from 1948 to 1975. As chairman from 1971 to 1975, he opposed the appointment of women and black legislators to the Committee.

Julius Axelrod was an American biochemist. He won a share of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1970 along with Bernard Katz and Ulf von Euler. The Nobel Committee honored him for his work on the release and reuptake of catecholamine neurotransmitters, a class of chemicals in the brain that include epinephrine, norepinephrine, and, as was later discovered, dopamine. Axelrod also made major contributions to the understanding of the pineal gland and how it is regulated during the sleep-wake cycle.

Wojciech Kilar was a Polish classical and film music composer. One of his greatest successes came with his score to Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1992, which received the ASCAP Award and the nomination for the Saturn Award for Best Music. In 2003, he won the César Award for Best Film Music written for The Pianist, for which he also received a BAFTA nomination. In 2012, he became the recipient of Poland's highest distinction, the Order of the White Eagle.

John Calvin Portman Jr. was an American neofuturistic architect and real estate developer widely known for popularizing hotels and office buildings with multi-storied interior atria. Portman also had a particularly large impact on the cityscape of his hometown of Atlanta, with the Peachtree Center complex serving as downtown's business and tourism anchor from the 1970s onward. The Peachtree Center area includes Portman-designed Hyatt, Westin, and Marriott hotels. Portman's plans typically dealt with primitives in the forms of symmetrical squares and circles.

Joseph Cornell was an American visual artist and filmmaker, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage. Influenced by the Surrealists, he was also an avant-garde experimental filmmaker. He was largely self-taught in his artistic efforts, and improvised his own original style incorporating cast-off and discarded artifacts. He lived most of his life in relative physical isolation, caring for his mother and his disabled brother at home, but remained aware of and in contact with other contemporary artists.

Constance Bartlett Hieatt was an American scholar with a broad interest in medieval languages and literatures, including Old Norse literature, Anglo-Saxon prosody and literature, and Middle English language, literature, and culture. She was an editor and translator of Karlamagnús saga, of Beowulf, and a scholar of Geoffrey Chaucer. She was particularly known as one of the world's foremost experts in English medieval cooking and cookbooks, and authored and co-authored a number of important books considered essential publications in the field.

General Om Prakash Malhotra,, best known as OP Malhotra, was a senior army officer in the Indian Army who served as the 10th Chief of Army Staff of the Indian Army from 1978 – 1981. Upon retiring from his military service in India, he served in the Indian Foreign Service when he tenured as the Indian Ambassador to Indonesia 1981–1984, and later served as a political administrator in India as the Governor of Punjab and Administrator of Chandigarh 1990–1991.