Paris: From legendary Egyptian actor Omar Sharif to Germany’s ex-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and Nobelwinning author Gunter Grass, here are some of the notable figures who died in 2015:

 January

 3: Edward Brooke, the first popularly elected black US senator, aged 95.

11: Swedish ‘Dolce Vita’ actress Anita Ekberg in hospital outside Rome aged 83.

23: Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz aged around 90 after suffering from pneumonia.

25: Greek largerthanlife singer Demis Roussos, in Athens aged 68.

29: Australian ‘Thorn Birds’ author, Colleen McCullough aged 77 in hospital off Australia’s eastern coast.

31: Former German president Richard von Weizsaecker, a member of the Christian Democrat party, aged 94.

 February

 6: Algerian feminist novelist Assia Djebar, aged 78 in a hospital in Paris.

 6: South African writer and outspoken critic of apartheid Andre Brink aged 79, on board a flight home from Belgium.

14: Italian Nutella owner and billionaire Michele Ferrero, aged 89.

14: Veteran French actor Louis Jourdan, star of ‘Gigi’ at his Beverly Hills home in Los Angeles aged 93.

21: US jazz trumpeter Clark Terry, aged 94, in an Istanbul hospital.

27: ‘Star Trek’s’ Mr Spock, US actor Leonard Nimoy, aged 83 at his home in Los Angeles.

28: Yasar Kemal, one of Turkey’s most celebrated writers, aged 92, in an Istanbul hospital.

March

12: British sciencefantasy ‘Discworld’ author Terry Pratchett aged 66 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

20: Australia’s former conservative prime minister Malcolm Fraser, after a short illness at the age of 84.

23: Singapore’s first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, aged 91 in hospital after suffering from pneumonia.

26: Swedish poet Tomas Transtroemer, who won the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature, aged 83.

April

2: Portuguese cinema legend Manoel de Oliveira, aged 106.

10: Former Australian cricket captain and commentator Richie Benaud, aged 84 in hospital after suffering from skin cancer.

13: Germany’s Nobelwinning author, Gunter Grass aged 87, in hospital in the northern city of Luebeck.

13: Uruguayan leftist writer Eduardo Galeano, aged 74 in a Montevideo hospital after suffering from lung cancer.

14: American soul icon Percy Sledge aged 74 in the American state of Louisiana, of liver cancer.

May

2: British crime writer Ruth Rendell, of ‘Chief Inspector Wexford’ fame, aged 85 in hospital after suffering a stroke.

14: B.B. King, the face of American blues worldwide, aged 89 in Las Vegas.

30: Beau Biden, the eldest son of US Vice President Joe Biden and the former attorney general of Delaware, of brain cancer aged 46.

June

5: Iraq’s Tareq Aziz, the voice of Saddam Hussein’s regime, in an Iraqi hospital aged 79 after many years of poor health as a convicted prisoner.

7: British Dracula actor Christopher Lee, aged 93, in hospital in London.

11: US saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman in New York aged 85.

17: Turkey’s former president and prime minister Suleyman Demirel, in an Ankara hospital aged 90 of heart failure.

22: American ‘Titanic’ music composer James Horner in a plane crash in California aged 61.

25: British actor Patrick Macnee, star of 1960s British spy series ‘The Avengers’ at his home in California, aged 93.

26: Russia’s former prime minister, foreign minister and master spy Yevgeny Primakov aged 85.

July

1: Nicholas Winton, known as the English Schindler for saving hundreds of Jewish children from the Nazis before World War II, aged 106, near London.

9: Saudi Arabia’s Prince Saud alFaisal, born in 1940 and the world’s longest serving foreign minister, in the United States.

10: Egyptianborn ‘Doctor Zhivago’ film legend Omar Sharif, of a heart attack in a Cairo hospital aged 83.

11: Japan’s Nintendo’s chief executive Satoru Iwata of cancer aged 55.

26: Bobbi Kristina Brown, the only child of US pop legend Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, aged 22, six months after she was found unconscious in a bathtub in her Atlanta, Georgia, home.

August

15: Pioneering US civil rights activist Julian Bond, aged 75 in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.

19: Senegal’s master drummer Doudou Ndiaye Rose aged 85 in a Dakar hospital.

22: The former ‘first lady’ of Cambodia’s murderous Khmer Rouge regime Ieng Thirith aged 83 in a former Khmer stronghold on the border with Thailand

30: Renowned British neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks aged 82 in New York of cancer.

30: American horror film master Wes Craven aged 76 at his Los Angeles home of brain cancer.

September

19: Bestselling BritishAmerican romance novelist Jackie Collins of breast cancer in California aged 77.

22: New York Yankees baseball icon Yogi Berra aged 90.

29: Phil Woods, a prolific US saxophonist aged 83.

October

5: Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell, 67, of detective Kurt Wallander fame, in Gothenburg of cancer.

14: Benin’s former military ruler and civilian president Mathieu Kerekou, aged 82.

24: ‘How Green Was My Valley’ Irish actress Maureen O’Hara, aged 95, at home in Boise, Idaho.

November

3: Iraqi Ahmed Chalabi, a key lobbyist for the USled invasion of Iraq who was blamed for providing false intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, of a heart attack aged 71.

10: Former West German chancellor, master of ‘realpolitik’ Helmut Schmidt, aged 96.

18: New Zealand’s rugby legend Jonah Lomu, aged 40, after suffering from kidney disease.

December

15: Licio Gelli, a masonic grand master implicated in some of the darkest chapters of Italy’s postwar history aged 96.

19: Germany’s Kurt Masur, the conductor who used music to ease German reunification and comfort New York after September 11, aged 88.

23: Hocine AitAhmed, one of the fathers of Algeria’s struggle for independence from France, in Lausanne, Switzerland aged 89.

28: Ian ‘Lemmy’ Kilmister, the hellraising frontman of British heavy metal band Motorhead, of cancer aged 70.