A short list of leading personalities who have died in 2008.

  • Edmund Hillary, the modest New Zealand beekeeper who along with his Nepalese guide Sherpa Tensing became the first person to climb Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain. Died at age 88 in his native land. (11 January).

  • US chess genius Bobby Fischer, who made world headlines in 1972 by defeating Soviet world champion Boris Spassky in a celebrated Cold War chess showdown in Reykjavik. Aged 64 in his adopted country of Iceland. (17 January).

  • Indonesia's former president Suharto, whose ironfisted rule became a byword for corruption and bloody repression but also brought economic growth. Aged 86 in a Jakarta hospital (27 January).

  • Arthur C. Clarke, the prolific British science fiction writer who penned the story behind Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey." At age 90 in his adopted country of Sri Lanka. (19 March).

  • Charlton Heston: US actor who starred in Hollywood epics such as "Ben Hur" and "The Ten Commandments" and also gained notoriety as a leading defender of the right of Americans to carry weapons. At his home in Beverly Hills, California, aged 84. (5 April).

  • French fashion legend Yves Saint Laurent, one of the great designers of the 20th century. Died in Paris at the age of 71 after a long illness. (1 June).

  • Veteran Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine, Arab cinema's most celebrated director, aged 82 in Cairo. (27 July).

  • The Russian writer and dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who shone a light on the inhuman world of the Soviet gulags and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970. At his Moscow home aged 89. (3 August).

  • Veteran US actor Paul Newman, star of films such as "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", "The Sting" and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". Died of cancer at his home in Westport, Connecticut, aged 83. (26 September).

  • Outspoken Austrian far-right leader Joerg Haider, who caused controversy with comments praising Nazi policies. Killed in a high-speed car crash, aged 58. (11 October).

  • Singer Miriam Makeba, the musical symbol of black South Africans' struggle against apartheid, at the age of 76 after collapsing at a concert in Italy. (10 November).

  • Alexy II, patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church and a key figure in its rebirth since the end of the Soviet Union. At age 79 in his residence near Moscow. (5 December).

    AFP

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