2016 deaths

Luis Alberto Monge Álvarez (December 29, 1925 – November 29, 2016) was the President of Costa Rica from 1982 to 1986. He also served as Costa Rica's first Ambassador to Israel from 1963 until 1966.

Maurice Georges Dantec (French: [dɑ̃tɛk]; 13 June 1959 – 25 June 2016) was a French-born Canadian science fiction writer and musician.

Léon-Raymond Soulier (13 January 1924 – 25 December 2016) was a French Prelate of the Catholic Church. Soulier was born in Le Malzieu-Ville. He was ordained a priest on 28 June 1947. Soulier was appointed bishop to the Diocese of Pamiers on 22 June 1971 and consecrated on 12 September 1971. Soulier was appointed Coadjutor Bishop to the Diocese of Limoges on 9 July 1987 and succeeded Henri Gufflet on 13 July 1988. Soulier retired from the Diocese of Limoges on 24 October 2000.

Paul-Marie François Rousset, Ist. del Prado (August 27, 1921 – January 9, 2016), was a French prelate of the Roman Catholic Church.
Rousset was born in Grièges and was ordained a priest on February 24, 1945, from the religious order of Ist. del Prado. Rousset was appointed titular bishop of the Utimma as well as auxiliary archbishop of the Archdiocese of Lyon on January 24, 1966. He was ordained a bishop on March 6, 1966. Rousset was appointed bishop of Saint-Étienne on February 23, 1971, and resigned from the diocese on September 28, 1987. He died on January 9, 2016.

Robert Goossens (30 January 1927 – 7 January 2016) was a French jeweller who became known as Monsieur Bijou. The son of a metal foundry worker, he was born in Paris, France. In his younger years, he served an apprenticeship in jewelry making, perfecting the techniques of casting, engraving, and embossing semi-precious and simulated stones into gold and silver metals. In his decades of creating fine jewelry, Goossens mixed the genuine stones with the fakes, a blend of the artificial gems with the semi-precious for clients including Coco Chanel, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent, Madame Grès, Christian Dior and others.

Jean-Philippe Douin (8 April 1940 – 19 January 2016) was a French Air Force general. He was the Chief of Staff of the French Air Force from 1994 to 1995 and Chief of the Defence Staff from 1995 to 1998. There was some controversy surrounding his appointment since, as a Conscript between 1958 and 1959, he had served in a French Marine Light Cavalry/Light Armored Reconnaissance Regiment (Régiment d'infanterie-chars de marine) in Algeria that was accused of committing war crimes during the Algerian War; later, as a young Air Force Lieutenant and Dassault Mirage III fighter pilot in 1961, his unit had taken part in the Algiers Putsch under the command of Air Vice Marashal Jouhaud. For most of his flying career, Douin piloted the Dassault Mirage III and the Dassault Mirage 5, commanding a squadron, wing and fighter group, before becoming the French Air Attache to Pakistan and Chile. After entering the General Ranks he served variously as a doctrinal specialist in the Air Force Staff & Training Command, the chief of Aerial Intelligence for a Fighter Division, and Commander of a Fighter Division.

Claude Parent (26 February 1923 – 27 February 2016), born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, was a French architect.
Architect, polemicist and theoretician, Claude Parent was the first person in France to make a sharp epistemological break with modernism, beginning in the mid 1950s. Through articles, books, magnificent manifesto-drawings and built projects, his work has enabled us to rethink our understanding and evolve our grasp of space. From the Maison Drusch (1963) all the way to his project for the Musée du Prado (1995), he has sought to create discontinuity by shifting and tipping volumes and by fracturing of the plan. Essentially self-taught, he began his career with Ionel Schein, with whom he worked until 1955. He also participated in the Espace group, founded in 1951 by the artists André Bloc and Félix del Marle. The Architecture Principe group (1963–68) was born out of his encounter with Paul Virilio. As was the adventure of the oblique function, their innovation through the continuity of the inclined plane, which led to the construction of the l’Eglise Sainte-Bernadette-du-Banlay in Nevers (1966).
After the 1968 split with Virilio, Claude Parent continued to experiment, develop and build the oblique function into his projects (Claude Parent's own house in Neuilly, painter Andrée Bellaguet's apartment) as well as in temporary installations in several Maisons de la Culture (Culture centers in France in the late 60s). In 1970, he curates and designs the French Pavilion at the 35th Venice Art Biennale, Italy, inviting artists such as Gérard Mannoni, Gilles Ehrmann, Samuel Buri; François Morellet, Andrée Bellaguet, Jean-Pierre Cousin and Charles Maussion. Claude Parent's space design (called "The Line of the Greatest Slope") is the first successful attempt to construct an oblique space. Imagined alone, but elaborated collectively, the French pavilion is considered by Parent as "a collective act [...] a creative action." With this event, Claude Parent transforms the viewer into works of art. This experiment becomes his working material and the reactions, positive as well as negative, will form the basis of the architect's study.Parent also designed several superstores in “béton brut” or “raw concrete” in Ris Orangis (1969) and Sens (1970), among others. In 1974, a few months after the oil crisis, EDF (France's production and distribution power company), Parent, 47, is entrusted with the coordination of a group of architects including, among others Paul Andreu, Jean Willerval and Roger Taillibert. For the next 10 years he leads the group to redesign nuclear power plants and find ways to better integrate them in the landscape. Commissions from the public sector for the French Education Department, the Regional Council of Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur in Marseille (1991), the Charles de Gaulle airport exchange center (1995) and the French Pavilion facade at the Venice Biennale of Architecture (1996) are all expressions of his quest for disequilibrium, movement and fluidity in architecture. Demanding, critical, provocative and fiercely obstinate, Claude Parent has continuously proposed places of contradiction generating doubt and disquiet and excluding any sort of passiveness with regard to architecture.
Though destined for a career as an engineer in the field of aeronautics, Claude Parent enrolled in the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts of Toulouse in 1943 in the architecture studio, and then in 1946 in the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts of Paris. He left before obtaining his diploma in architecture, and later founded his own firm in 1956, but was only recognized by and admitted to the Order of Architects in 1966, based on his experience. An Academician, Claude Parent is a Commander of the French Legion of Honor, a Commander of Arts and Letters, Officer of the Palmes Académiques and a Commander of the National Order of Merit. Prizes stand as milestones marking his entire career: National Grand Prize of Architecture (1979), the silver medal of the Academy of Architecture, the medal of the Central Union of the Decorative Arts, the gold medal of the Society for the Encouragement of Progress and the medal of the U.I.A for his work in criticism. In 1994, Architecture critic and curator Fréderic Migayrou celebrates Claude Parent's essential contribution and unique place in post WWII architecture, and many leading architects such as Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, Zaha Hadid recognize him as both a precursor and an influence. In 2010, a retrospective exhibition at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine was dedicated to this major figure in the history of 20th-century architecture.

Georges Balandier (21 December 1920 – 5 October 2016) was a French sociologist, anthropologist and ethnologist noted for his research in Sub-Saharan Africa. Balandier was born in Aillevillers-et-Lyaumont. He was a professor at the Sorbonne (Université René Descartes, Paris-V), and is a member of the Center for African Studies (Centre d'études africaines [Ceaf]), a research center of the École pratique des hautes études (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences). He held for many years the Editorship of Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie (previously held by his mentor Georges Gurvitch) and edited the series Sociologie d'Aujourd'hui at Presses Universitaires de France. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1976. He died on 5 October 2016 at the age of 95.

Rose Mofford (née Perica; June 10, 1922 – September 15, 2016) was an American civil servant and politician of the Democratic Party who served as governor of Arizona from 1988 to 1991. Her career in state government spanned 51 years, beginning as a secretary and working her way up the ranks to become the state's first female secretary of state, serving from 1977 to 1988, and the state's first female governor.

Major André Édouard Turcat (23 October 1921 – 4 January 2016) was a French Air Force pilot and test pilot celebrated for flying the first prototype of Concorde for its maiden flight.Turcat was born on 23 October 1921 in Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône) into a family in the automotive industry. He studied at Ecole Polytechnique.