The following is a list of notable deaths in October 1990.
Entries for each day are listed alphabetically by surname. A typical entry lists information in the following sequence: Name, age, country of citizenship at birth, subsequent country of citizenship (if applicable), reason for notability, cause of death (if known), and reference.
October 1990
1
John Stewart Bell, 62, Northern Irish physicist, cerebral hemorrhage. Edmund George Irving, 80, British hydrographer. Andrzej Krzanowski, 39, Polish composer. Augustin Laurent, 94, French politician. Curtis LeMay, 83, American general, heart attack. Russell Thacher, 71, American film producer (Soylent Green), complications from surgery. Tommy Thompson, 63, American football player, cancer.
2
Peter Herman Adler, 90, Austrian-born American conductor. Xosé María Díaz Castro, 76, Galician poet and translator. John Groff, 100, American general, heart attack. Loni Nest, 75, German actress. Isolina Rondón, 77, Puerto Rican nationalist. Fred Rwigyema, 33, Rwandan soldier, shot. Heinie Schuble, 83, American baseball player. Mercedes Simone, 86, Argentinian singer and actress. Norbert Vesak, 53, Canadian choreographer, brain aneurysm.
3
Winslow Ames, 83, American art historian, heart attack. Amy Bailey, 94, Jamaican civil rights activist. Charlotte Boyle, 91, American swimmer. Stefano Casiraghi, 30, Italian powerboat racer, boating accident. Res Jost, 72, Swiss theoretical physicist. Eleanor Steber, 76, American opera singer, complications from heart surgery.
4
Alyn Ainsworth, 66, British musician. Jill Bennett, 58, English actress, drug overdose. Avis Bunnage, 67, English actress. Erwin Bünning, 84, German biologist, Alzheimer's disease. Luciano Catenacci, 57, Italian actor. Roy Charman, 60, English sound engineer. Jacques de Mahieu, 74, French-Argentine anthropologist and peronist. Vance Dinges, 75, American baseball player. Sergey Lapin, 78, Soviet diplomat. František Nekolný, 82, Czechoslovak boxer. Waldemar Philippi, 61, German footballer. Ray Stephens, 35, American singer (Village People) and actor (The Great Space Coaster), AIDS. Peter Taylor, 62, English football player, lung disease.
5
Félix Dafauce, 93, Spanish actor. André Grabar, 94, Ukrainian-American art historian. Dixie Howell, 70, American baseball player. Yoshio Kondo, 80, American Biologist and malacologist. J. Murray Mitchell, 62, American climatologist. Sam Taylor, 74, American saxophonist. Ramkumar Verma, 85, Hindi poet. Đorđe Vujadinović, 80, Yugoslav football player. Jan Hendrik Waszink, 81, Dutch Latin scholar.
6
Märta Dorff, 81, Swedish film actress. Asser Fagerström, 78, Finnish pianist, composer and actor. James E. Newcom, 85, American film editor. Danny Rodriguez, 22, American Christian rapper, shot. Richard P. Ross Jr., 84, American general. Henryk Vogelfanger, 86, Polish actor. Bahriye Üçok, 70-71, Turkish politician and journalist, assassinated.
7
Chiara Badano, 18, Italian Catholic activist, osteosarcoma, bone cancer. Bellarmino Bagatti, 84, Italian archaeologist. Darrel Brown, 67, American basketball player. Beatrice Hutton, 97, Australian architect. Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, 78, Emirati politician, prime minister (since 1979). Scott M. Matheson, 61, American politician, governor of Utah (1977–1985), multiple myeloma. Grim Natwick, 100, American animator (Fleischer Studios), pneumonia. Manuel Ramos Otero, 42, Puerto Rican writer, AIDS.
8
Juan José Arévalo, 86, Guatemalan politician, president (1945–1951). Frank Cope, 74, American football player. William Henry Harrison III, 94, American politician, member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1951–1955, 1961–1965, 1967–1969), heart failure. William James Jameson, 92, American judge. Jimmy Mills, 96, Scottish-American footballer. Robert F. Murphy, 66, American anthropologist, heart failure. Kamalapati Tripathi, 85, Indian politician. Eric Wennström, 81, Swedish hurdler. B.J. Wilson, 43, English drummer, pneumonia.
9
Mildred Bayer, 81, American humanitarian. Murray Bowen, 77, American psychologist. John Brooks, 80, American Olympic long jumper (1936). Georges de Rham, 87, Swiss mathematician. Dessie Grew, 37, Irish Provisional IRA volunteer, shot. Markku Hakulinen, 34, Finnish ice hockey player, suicide by train collision. Martin McCaughey, 23, Irish Provisional IRA volunteer, shot. Richard Murdoch, 83, English actor. Arnold Olsen, 73, American politician, member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1961–1971). Géza Ottlik, 78, Hungarian writer and mathematician. Boris Paichadze, 75, Soviet footballer. Lars Thörn, 86, Swedish sailor.