1927 births

Simon Zimny (18 May 1927 – 3 April 2007) was a French professional footballer who played as a defender.

Dieter Eppler (11 February 1927, in Stuttgart – 12 April 2008, in Stuttgart) was a German television actor and director of radio dramas. He was an actor, known for Jonas (1957), The Country Doctor (1987) and The Last Winter (1960). He was married to Magdalene Schnaitmann and they had five children. He was a prolific German character actor, seen in many TV crime series like Tatort, Derrick and The Old Fox. In the 1950s and 1960s, he had leading roles in several Edgar Wallace adaptations. Often portraying military types, he was noted for his starring role in U 47 – Kapitänleutnant Prien (1957). He also did horror as in the character of the evil vampire in the 1962 film Slaughter of the Vampires. He stayed in Germany and worked there and in European films until his death in 2008.

Giancarlo Astrua (11 August 1927 – 29 July 2010) was an Italian professional road bicycle racer. He was born in Graglia.

Alessandro D'Ottavio (26 August 1927 – 31 December 1987) was an Italian boxer. He won the bronze medal at the Olympic Games in 1948 for Italy in the 67 kg category. He was born in Rome, Italy.

Philippe Lemaire (14 March 1927 – 15 March 2004) was a French actor. He appeared in more than 90 films from 1946 to 2004.
Lemaire was married three times; Nicole Pinton (1949–1951) (divorced); Juliette Gréco from 1953 to 1956, had one daughter, Laurence-Marie Lemaire (1954–2016); and to Claude Bouton (1959–1980) (divorced). He committed suicide one day after his 77th birthday.

Sybille Alida Johanna Niemans (27 September 1927 – 31 October 1959), known as Blonde Dolly, was a Dutch prostitute and businesswoman who was murdered by strangulation. Her murderer was never caught.

Robert Boutigny (24 July 1927 – 22 July 2022) was a French sprint canoeist who competed from the late 1940s to the early 1950s. Competing in two Summer Olympics, he won a bronze medal in the C-1 1000 m event at London in 1948. Boutigny also won two medals at the 1950 ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships with a gold in the C-1 10000 m and a silver in the C-1 1000 m events.

Georges Vallerey Jr. (21 October 1927 – 4 October 1954) was a French swimmer, born in Amiens, who competed in the 1948 Summer Olympics.

Robert Paul Kraft (June 16, 1927 – May 26, 2015) was an American astronomer. He performed pioneering work on Cepheid variables, stellar rotation, novae, and the chemical evolution of the Milky Way. His name is also associated with the Kraft break: the abrupt change in the average rotation rate of main sequence stars around spectral type F8.

Charles Edward Fonville (April 27, 1927 – July 13, 1994) was an American track and field athlete who set a world record in the shot put. In 1945, he had been named the Michigan High School Track & Field Athlete of the Year. He won the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) shot put championship in 1947 and 1948. Competing for the University of Michigan at the Kansas Relays in April 1948, Fonville broke a 14-year-old world record, throwing the shot a foot further than the record.
Fonville was considered the favorite for the 1948 Olympic gold medal but a back injury prevented him from qualifying for the Games. After undergoing back surgery in November 1948, Fonville sat out the 1949 season, but came back in 1950 to win his third Big Ten Conference shot put championship. Fonville later became a lawyer and practiced law in Detroit, Michigan for 40 years. He was inducted into the University of Michigan Athletic Hall of Honor in 1979, as part of the second class of inductees.