Notable Deaths on January 12

Maximilian I was King of the Romans from 1486 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1508 until his death in 1519. He was never crowned by the Pope, as the journey to Rome was blocked by the Venetians. He proclaimed himself elected emperor in 1508 at Trento, with Pope Julius II later recognising it. This broke the tradition of requiring a papal coronation for the adoption of the Imperial title. Maximilian was the only surviving son of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor and Eleanor of Portugal, Holy Roman Empress. From his coronation as King of the Romans in 1486, he ran a double government, or Doppelregierung with his father until Frederick's death in 1493.

Alice Lucille Coltrane, also known as Swamini Turiyasangitananda or simply Turiya, was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and Hindu spiritual leader. An accomplished pianist and one of the few harpists in the history of jazz, Coltrane recorded many albums as a bandleader, beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s for Impulse! and other record labels. One of the foremost proponents of spiritual jazz, her eclectic music proved influential both within and outside the world of jazz. She was married to the jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane, with whom she performed in 1966–1967.

Pierre de Fermat was a French magistrate, polymath, and mathematician credited for early developments that led to infinitesimal calculus, including his technique of adequality. In particular, he is recognized for his discovery of an original method of finding the greatest and the smallest ordinates of curved lines, which is analogous to that of differential calculus, then unknown, and his research into number theory. He made notable contributions to analytic geometry, probability, and optics. He is best known for his Fermat's principle for light propagation and his Fermat's Last Theorem in number theory, which he described in a note at the margin of a copy of Diophantus' Arithmetica. He was also a lawyer at the parlement of Toulouse, France, a poet, a skilled Latinist, and a Hellenist.

Princess Patricia of Connaught was a member of the British royal family and a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. She was the third and youngest child and the second daughter of Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, and Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia. She was also the only one of her father's children to outlive him: her siblings, Margaret and Arthur, both died before their father. Upon her marriage to Alexander Ramsay, she relinquished her title as a British princess and the style of Royal Highness and assumed the style Lady Patricia Ramsay.

Anne, Princess Royal was the second child and eldest daughter of King George II of Great Britain and his consort Caroline of Ansbach. She was the wife of William IV, Prince of Orange, the first hereditary stadtholder of all seven provinces of the Dutch Republic. She was Regent of the Netherlands from 1751 until her death in 1759, exercising extensive powers on behalf of her son William V. She was known as an Anglophile, due to her English upbringing and family connections, but was unable to convince the Dutch Republic to enter the Seven Years' War on the side of the British. Princess Anne was the second daughter of a British sovereign to hold the title Princess Royal. In the Netherlands she was styled Anna van Hannover.

Kinji Fukasaku was a Japanese filmmaker. Known for his "broad range and innovative filmmaking", he worked in many different genres and styles, but was best known for his gritty yakuza films, typified by the Battles Without Honor and Humanity series (1973–1976). According to the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, his "turbulent energy and at times extreme violence express a cynical critique of social conditions and genuine sympathy for those left out of Japan's postwar prosperity". He used a cinema verite-inspired shaky camera technique in many of his films from the early 1970s.

Charles Brenton Huggins was a Canadian-American surgeon and physiologist known for his work on prostate function, prostate cancer, and breast cancer. Born in Halifax in 1901, Huggins moved to the United States for medical school. He was one of the founding staff members of the University of Chicago Medical School, where he remained for the duration of his professional research career. Huggins's work on how sex hormones influence prostate function ultimately led to his discovery of hormone therapies to treat prostate cancer. For this finding, he was awarded the 1966 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. In addition to his work on prostate cancer, Huggins explored the relationship between hormones and breast cancer, developed an animal model for breast cancer, and developed chromogenic substrates that are widely used for biochemical analyses. Huggins continued to perform research into his 90s; he died in Chicago in 1997.

Admiral of the Fleet John Cronyn Tovey, 1st Baron Tovey,, sometimes known as Jack Tovey, was a Royal Navy officer. During the First World War he commanded the destroyer HMS Onslow at the Battle of Jutland and then commanded the destroyer Ursa at the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight. During the Second World War he initially served as Second-in-Command of the Mediterranean Fleet in which role he commanded the Mediterranean Fleet's Light Forces. He then served as Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet and was responsible for orchestrating the pursuit and destruction of the Bismarck. After that he became Commander-in-Chief, The Nore with responsibility for controlling the east coast convoys and organising minesweeping operations.

Glenda Dickerson was an American director, folklorist, adaptor, writer, choreographer, actor, black theatre organizer, and educator. She was the second African-American woman to direct on Broadway, with her 1980 musical production of Reggae: a musical revelation. She is known throughout the American Theater as a promoter of a "womanist" direction in the theater and her work focused on folklore, myths, black legends, and classical works reinterpreted. She worked in venues including the Biltmore Theatre (Broadway), Circle in the Square, The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, Ford's Theatre and the Kennedy Center. In 1971, Dickerson received an Emmy nomination and in 1972 a Peabody Award.

Ernest Regnard Leonce Dezentjé was a Dutch-Indonesian painter. Dezentjé worked for the office of the auditor general until the 1910s, when he took up painting and began learning from established artists such as Leo Eland and Gerard Pieter Adolfs. Dezentjé joined the Kuntskring and was exhibiting by the 1920s, gaining popularity for his depiction of Mount Gede. By 1940 he had held several solo exhibitions and was acknowledged as one of the most important artists of the Dutch East Indies. He remained active through the 1970s, establishing a close friendship with President Sukarno and taking several apprentices.

Robert Gover was an American journalist who became a best-selling novelist at age 30. His first novel, One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding, a satire on American racism, remains a cult classic that helped break down America's fear of four-letter words and sexually explicit scenes, as well as sensitizing Americans to sanctimonious hypocrisy. Gover worked with writers for three decades. On the Run with Dick and Jane was his ninth novel. His previous book, Time and Money, explores economic and planetary cyclical correlations. In 2015, the Eric Hoffer Prose Award was renamed the Gover Story Prize in his honor.

Hiram Walker was an American entrepreneur and founder of the Hiram Walker and Sons Ltd. distillery in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. He was born in East Douglas, Massachusetts, and moved to Detroit in 1838. He purchased land across the Detroit River, just east of what is Windsor, Ontario, and established a distillery in 1858 in what would become Walkerville, Ontario. He began selling his whisky as Hiram Walker's Club Whisky, in containers that were "clearly marked". He used a process to make his whisky that was vastly different from all other distillers.

Keith Max Jackson was an American sports commentator, journalist, author, and radio personality, known for his career with ABC Sports (1966–2006). While he covered a variety of sports over his career, he is best known for his coverage of college football from 1952 until 2006 and his distinctive voice, that according to Steve Kelley in The Seattle Times was "a throwback voice, deep and operatic. A voice that was to college football what Edward R. Murrow's was to war. It was the voice of ultimate authority in his profession."

Sir Roger Vernon Scruton was an English philosopher, writer, and social critic who specialised in aesthetics and political philosophy, particularly in the furtherance of conservative views. The founding-editor of The Salisbury Review, a conservative political journal, Scruton wrote over 50 books on architecture, art, philosophy, politics, religion, among other topics. Scruton was also Chairman of the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission for the United Kingdom government from 2019 to 2020. His views on classical architecture and beauty are still promoted via his foundation, while his political stances remain influential.

Connie Berube Binsfeld was an American Republican politician from the U.S. State of Michigan. She served as the 60th lieutenant governor of Michigan. Starting as an advocate for the environment in planning for the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, she also was known for protecting interests of women and children. She was the first woman to hold leadership posts in Michigan's House, Senate and executive branch, where she served four terms in the House, two in the Senate, and two as Lieutenant Governor.

François Bigot was a French government official. He served as the Financial Commissary on Île Royale, commissary general of the ill-fated Duc d'Anville expedition and finally as the Intendant of New France, the last before its conquest by Britain. Subsequently, he was accused of corruption, trialed and convicted in France, and imprisoned in the Bastille for eleven months. Before he could be banished, his sentence upon release, he escaped to Switzerland, where he would live until his death.

Claude Miller Jarman Jr. was an American actor. He became a child star with his role as Jody Baxter in The Yearling (1946), for which he won an Academy Juvenile Award. Further roles in films like Intruder in the Dust (1949) and Rio Grande (1950) followed. Jarman largely retired from acting in early adulthood and later served as executive director of the San Francisco International Film Festival, and director of Cultural Affairs for the City of San Francisco.

William Wyndham Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville was a British Pittite Tory politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1806 to 1807, but was a supporter of the Whigs for the duration of the Napoleonic Wars. As prime minister, his most significant achievement was the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. However, his government failed to either make peace with France or to accomplish Catholic emancipation and it was dismissed in the same year.

Sang Weihan (桑維翰), courtesy name Guoqiao (國僑), formally the Duke of Wei (魏公), was a Chinese historian, military general, poet, and politician of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period state Later Jin, serving as chief of staff (Shumishi) during the reigns of both of Later Jin's emperors, Shi Jingtang and Shi Chonggui. While not a soldier by training, he was said to be capable and respected as the overseer of the armies of the realm.