2024 deaths

Abilio dos Santos Diniz (December 28, 1936 – February 18, 2024) was a Brazilian businessman. He was the chairman of the board of directors of Península Participações, chairman of the board of directors of BRF and member of the board of directors of both Carrefour Group and Carrefour Brasil. Through GPA, Diniz became one of the wealthiest individuals in Brazil. In 2016, Forbes ranked him 477th richest person in the world and 14th in Brazil.In 2009, Época magazine named him one of the 100 most influential Brazilians of the year. He previously served as a partner of Companhia Brasileira de Distribuição, a distribution company which owns the brands Varejo Alimentar, Pão de Açúcar and Extra, wholesaler Assaí, and appliance company Ponto Frio (Globex). He was also a shareholder of Casas Bahia, through Globex S/A.

Toppen Bech (28 March 1939 – 5 February 2024) was a Norwegian journalist.

Jerry Hilgenberg (April 9, 1931 – January 14, 2024) was an American football player and coach for the University of Iowa. He was a first team All-American in 1953 and served as an assistant coach to the Iowa football team for eight seasons.

Wesley Edward Whitead (April 15, 1933 – February 22, 2024) was an American politician who was a Democratic member of the Iowa House of Representatives from the 1st District. He represented the district from 1997 through 2011, with a two-year interruption from 2001 through 2003, when he was defeated by Republican Greg Hoversten. He did not run for re-election in 2010.During his last term in the Iowa House, Whitead served on the Environmental Protection, Local Government, Natural Resources, and Public Safety committees, as well as serving as vice-chair of the Veterans Affairs committee.
Whitead died on February 22, 2024, at the age of 90.

Donald Delbert Clayton (March 18, 1935 – January 3, 2024) was an American astrophysicist whose most visible achievement was the prediction from nucleosynthesis theory that supernovae are intensely radioactive. That earned Clayton the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (1992) for “theoretical astrophysics related to the formation of (chemical) elements in the explosions of stars and to the observable products of these explosions”. Supernovae thereafter became the most important stellar events in astronomy owing to their profoundly radioactive nature. Not only did Clayton discover radioactive nucleosynthesis during explosive silicon burning in stars but he also predicted a new type of astronomy based on it, namely the associated gamma-ray line radiation emitted by matter ejected from supernovae. That paper was selected as one of the fifty most influential papers in astronomy during the twentieth century for the Centennial Volume of the American Astronomical Society. He gathered support from influential astronomers and physicists for a new NASA budget item for a gamma-ray-observatory satellite, achieving successful funding for Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. With his focus on radioactive supernova gas Clayton discovered a new chemical pathway causing carbon dust to condense there by a process that is activated by the radioactivity.Clayton also authored a novel, The Joshua Factor (1985), a parable of the origin of mankind utilizing the mystery of solar neutrinos; a science autobiography and a memoir; and a history of the origin of each isotope, Handbook of Isotopes in the Cosmos (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003).
Clayton died on January 3, 2024, at the age of 88.

Frances Helen Manners, Duchess of Rutland (née Sweeny; 19 June 1937 – 21 January 2024) was a British peeress and socialite. The wife of Charles Manners, 10th Duke of Rutland, following his death in 1999, she was known as the Dowager Duchess of Rutland.

John Scales Avery (May 26, 1933 – January 4, 2024) was an American theoretical chemist noted for his research publications in quantum chemistry, thermodynamics, evolution, and history of science. Since the early 1990s, Avery had been an active world peace activist. During these years, he was part of a group associated with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. In 1995, this group received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. He was an Associate Professor in quantum chemistry at the University of Copenhagen. His 2003 book Information Theory and Evolution set forth the view that the phenomenon of life, including its origin and evolution, including human cultural evolution, has its background situated over thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory. Avery died on January 4, 2024, at the age of 90.

Jerry Coker (November 28, 1932 – January 14, 2024) was an American jazz saxophonist and pedagogue.Coker was born in South Bend, Indiana. He attended Indiana University in the early 1950s, but interrupted his studies in 1953 when Woody Herman offered him a job in "The Herd". Coker eventually earned undergraduate and graduate degrees while he taught jazz at Sam Houston State University (then Sam Houston State Teachers College). He recorded under his own name in the mid-1950s and as a sideman with Nat Pierce, Dick Collins, and Mel Lewis; later that decade he played with Stan Kenton.
In 1960 he began teaching and increasingly turned to music education and composition. He taught at Duke University, University of Miami (where he created one of the first jazz degree programs in the country at the Frost School of Music), North Texas State University, and started the Studio Music and Jazz program at the University of Tennessee, where he was a professor of music from the 1980s through the 2000s. Notable students include Randy Brecker and Pat Metheny. Coker and his colleagues Jamey Aebersold and David Baker have been called the "ABCs" of jazz education, and in 1994 Coker was inducted into the Jazz Educators Hall of Fame.Coker died on January 14, 2024, at the age of 91.

Phillip Earl Niblock (October 2, 1933 – January 8, 2024) was an American composer, filmmaker, and videographer. In 1985, he was appointed director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York with a parallel branch in Ghent, Belgium.

Welcome Wade Wilson Sr. (March 17, 1928 – February 16, 2024) was chairman of the Welcome Group—a privately held real estate development firm with 5 million square feet of industrial and manufacturing facilities in over 100 locations in the state of Texas. The company headquarters is located in Houston, Texas (USA). He previously served on the Board of Regents of the University of Houston System, and was a 1949 graduate of the University of Houston.