1939 births

Harold Jon "Jack" Hicks was a sculptor, who worked in the later part of the twentieth century. He was trained in ceramics and photography but excelled in metal sculpture.

Robert James Waller (August 1, 1939 – March 10, 2017) was an American author best known for The Bridges of Madison County. He was also a professor, photographer, and musician.

John Harrison Frick Jr., also known as Mark Elliott (September 24, 1939 – April 3, 2021), was an American voice-over artist who performed numerous voice-overs for The Walt Disney Company from 1983 to 2008. He was also the voice of CBS and FOX throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and various theatrical trailers for other animated films.

Michael J. O'Brien (born May 4, 1939) is an American politician in the state of Iowa.
O'Brien was born in Shenandoah, Iowa. He attended Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa and was a teacher. A Democrat, he served in the Iowa House of Representatives from 1993 to 2003 (79th district).

Willy Vanden Berghen (3 July 1939 – 30 March 2022) was a Belgian professional road bicycle racer. In 1960 he won two bronze medals in the road race, one at the amateur world championships and the other at the Olympic Games.

Count Ladislas de Hoyos (Ladislaus Alfons Konstantin Heinrich Johannes de Hoyos, French pronunciation: [ladislɑ d(ə) wajo]; 27 March 1939 – 8 December 2011), born into the Austro-Hungarian House of Hoyos, was a French TV journalist and politician.
Hoyos was a news broadcaster for TF1 and an investigative journalist. In 1972, in Bolivia, he unmasked with Nazi hunter Beate Klarsfeld the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie who was hiding in this country under the false identity of Klaus Altmann. He covered in 1987 the trial of Barbie in Lyon and wrote a book about it.
In 1991, Ladislas de Hoyos left the 8pm news program of TF1. He was replaced by the French journalist Claire Chazal. In 1997, he worked at Radio France Inter to produce the history magazine The Days of the Century.
In 2001 he was elected mayor of Seignosse, Landes, position he held until his death. In July 2006, he was appointed Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur.
In 1975, he married Corinne Meilhan-Bordes, air hostess at Air France with whom he had two daughters, Amelie and Charlotte. In 1991 he met Magali Fernández-Salazar, young Neuroscientist, Philosopher and former Journalist at Radio France Internationale, with whom he began a relationship that lasted until the end of his life.
He died on 8 December 2011 in Seignosse, where he is buried.

Colette Nys-Mazure (born 14 May 1939) is a Belgian poet, essayist, playwright, and novelist writing in French.She was born in Wavre. She received a master's degree in modern literature from the Catholic University of Leuven. From 1961 to 1999, she taught French literature.Following the death of her parents, she moved to Tournai.She also writes books for young people and essays. Her work has been translated into English, German, Polish, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Czech, Swedish and other languages.

Thomas Irving Atkins (March 2, 1939 – June 27, 2008) was an American attorney and politician who served as a member of the Boston City Council and General Counsel of the NAACP.

Warwick Hutton (17 July 1939 – 28 September 1994) was a British painter, glass engraver, illustrator, and children's author.
He is most widely known for elegant pen and ink and watercolor illustrations for children’s books. His subjects were Biblical, folk, and mythological stories which Hutton retold, such as Noah and the Great Flood, The Nose Tree, and Theseus and the Minotaur. He also worked with texts by Hans Christian Andersen (The Tinderbox) and with retellings of traditional stories by author Susan Cooper (The Silver Cow, The Selkie Girl, Tam Lin).
The Nose Tree and Jonah and the Big Fish were chosen for the New York Times’s annual list of best-illustrated children's books. Jonah and the Great Fish was also the recipient of the 1984 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Best Picture Book.
Hutton died of cancer on 28 September 1994 in Cambridge, England.
His parents were immigrants from New Zealand; his father was the artist and glass engraver John Hutton and his mother was also a modern artist, called Helen Blair.

David Cushman (November 15, 1939 – August 14, 2000) was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. He was the son of Wayne B. and Mildred M. and married to Linda L. Kranch. They have two children together named Michael and Laura Cushman. Dr. Cushman was an American chemist who co-invented captopril, the first of the ACE inhibitors used in the treatment of cardiovascular disease. With Miguel A. Ondetti, he won the 1999 Lasker Award for: "developing an innovative approach to drug design based on protein structure and using it to create the ACE inhibitors, powerful oral agents for the treatment of high blood pressure, heart failure, and diabetic kidney disease."