1998 deaths

Laila Schou Nilsen (18 March 1919 – 30 July 1998) was one of the foremost Norwegian sportspeople of the 20th century, best known as a speed skater, alpine skier, and tennis player. She was one of the pioneers in women's speed skating, both in Norway and internationally, along with two other skaters from the Oslo Skøiteklub ('Oslo Skating Club'), Undis Blikken and Synnøve Lie. Across her sporting career – which also included handball, ski jumping, cross-country skiing, and motorsport – Nilsen won 101 Norwegian Championship titles, of which 86 were in tennis.

Duilio Del Prete (25 June 1938 – 2 February 1998) was an Italian actor, dubber and singer-songwriter.
Del Prete was born at Cuneo, Piedmont. As a singer-songwriter, he wrote political songs and recorded an album of Jacques Brel's covers; he also wrote songs for several artists.As an actor, he participated to several films of the commedia all'italiana, including My Friends and Alfredo, Alfredo, both by Pietro Germi, and Sessomatto. He also played in several foreign films, including two for director Peter Bogdanovich, Daisy Miller (1974) and At Long Last Love (1975).
Del Prete died in Rome of cancer in 1998.

Pål Løkkeberg (2 August 1934 – 29 January 1998) was a Norwegian film director and screenwriter. He directed six films between 1962 and 1990. His 1967 film Liv was entered into the 17th Berlin International Film Festival.

Emma Danieli (born Emma Fretta; 14 October 1936 – 21 June 1998) was an Italian actress and television personality.

Germán List Arzubide (31 May 1898 – 17 October or 19 October 1998) was a Mexican poet and revolutionary.Born in Puebla, he was an active participant in the Revolution, fighting alongside Emiliano Zapata as well as extolling him and other revolutionary leaders in his poetry. He was wounded and jailed three times, the first occasion providing the inspiration for his very first poem, a mocking caricature of his jailer. He wrote biographies of both Zapata (Exaltacion, published in 1927) and another assassinated revolutionary leader Francisco Madero (Madero, el Mexico de 1910, published in 1973). According to the poet James Kirkup, who wrote an obituary of List upon his death: "The literary work of List and his contemporaries, both poets and novelists (including Martin Luis Guzman and Mariano Azuela), create the best picture of those passionate uprisings."
List Arzubide was one of the major members of Stridentism and, with Manuel Maples Arce, redacted and gave out the second stridentist manifesto in the city of Puebla. He also wrote a comprehensive account of the movement, titled El movimiento estridentista (1926), remarkable because it is, at the same time, a history, a defence and a literary work. His other work, Practica de educación irreligiosa (1936), is listed in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. In 1933, List Arzubide wrote Troka el Poderoso, a children's educational radio program that aired on the station XFX. The show incorporated Stridentist themes into the narrative, which centered on a robot named Troka replacing old technology and the natural world with modern science. List Arzubide also wrote plays for the state-sponsored, politically didactic puppet show tour, Teatro Guiñol.He was a close friend of the painter Fernando Leal, who portrayed him as one of the characters of his cycle of frescoes dedicated to Bolivar's Epic.
In one of his last interviews he said: "I want to die smiling, as I expect to do soon, since I don't want to continue abusing life, especially when the doctors have taken all the fun away by forbidding me alcohol and women."He died in Mexico City at the age of 100, one of the last survivors of the Revolution.

Manuel Pérez Martínez (May 9, 1943 – February 14, 1998), also known as "El Cura Pérez" ("Pérez the Priest"), was the leader of the Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN) for over three decades. The ELN was the second-largest rebel group in Colombia at that time.

Maria del Pilar Cordero (March 1, 1910 – August 2, 1998), better known as Mapy Cortés, was a Puerto Rican actress who participated in many films during the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, where she became one of the industry's most beloved and bankable stars of the 1940s.

Pierre Deniker (16 February 1917, in Paris – 17 August 1998) was involved, jointly with Jean Delay and J. M. Harl, in the introduction of chlorpromazine (Thorazine), the first antipsychotic used in the treatment of schizophrenia, in the 1950s. Thorazine had been used in surgical procedures peri-operatively as an anti-nausea medication in France. Patients were noted to be less anxious and calmer. This observation eventually led Deniker to try chlorpromazine with patients who had schizophrenia, where he observed notable improvement in symptoms.
The pharmaceutical company Smith-Kline had purchased the chlorpromazine rights from Rhone-Poulenc in France and had been marketing it as an anti-nausea medication. After Deniker's observations, they sought and received FDA approval in 1954 to market Thorazine for the treatment of schizophrenia.

Jacques Guillermaz (16 January 1911 – 4 February 1998) was a French diplomat, military officer, and scholar of modern Chinese history. He served as military attaché in China from 1937 to 1943, then returned to fight for the liberation of France in 1943, served once more in China from 1945 to 1951, and went on to advise the French government on policy toward Asia. In 1958 he founded the Center for Research and Documentation on Modern and Contemporary China and wrote widely on modern Chinese affairs. He is particularly known for his studies of Chinese Communist Party history.His honors include reaching the rank of General in the French Army and receiving the Académie française Prix Albéric Rocheron in 1969 for Histoire du parti communiste chinois and again in 1973 for his book, Le parti communiste chinois au pouvoir.

Elena Garro (December 11, 1916 – August 22, 1998) was a Mexican screenwriter, journalist, dramaturg, short story writer, and novelist. She has been described as the initiator of the Magical Realism movement, though she rejected this affiliation. She is a recipient of the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize.