art historian (b. 1909) November 5 – Gholam Reza Azhari, 73rd prime minister of Iran (b. 1912) November 6 – Anthony Shaffer, English novelist and playwright (b. 1926) November 9 – Giovanni Leone, 37th Prime Minister of Italy and 6th President of Italy (b. 1908) November 10 – Ken Kesey, American author (b. 1935) November 12 – Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, American-born Hindu guru (b. 1927) November 14 – Juan Carlos Lorenzo, Argentine footballer and coach (b. 1922) November 24 Sophie, Princess of Greece and Denmark (b. 1914) Melanie Thornton, American singer (b. 1967) (see Crossair Flight 3597) November 29 – George Harrison, English musician (b. 1943) December December – Kira Ivanova, Soviet–Russian figure skater (b. 1963) December 5 – Sir Peter Blake, New Zealand yachtsman (b. 1948) December 8 – Betty Holberton, American computer scientist (b. 1917) December 10 – Ashok Kumar, Indian actor (b. 1911) December 12 – Josef Bican, Czech–Austrian footballer (b. 1913) December 13 – Rufus Thomas, American singer (b. 1917) December 18 – Gilbert Bécaud, French singer-songwriter (b. 1927) December 20 – Léopold Sédar Senghor, first president of Senegal (b. 1906) December 23 – Jelle Zijlstra, Dutch politician and economist, Prime Minister of the Netherlands (b. 1918) December 26 – Sir Nigel Hawthorne, British actor (b. 1929) December 31 John Grigg, British writer (b. 1924) Eileen Heckart, American actress (b. 1919) Harshad Mehta, Indian stockbroker (b. 1954) Nobel Prizes Physics – Eric Allin Cornell, Wolfgang Ketterle, and Carl Wieman Chemistry – William Standish Knowles, Ryōji Noyori, and Karl Barry Sharpless Medicine – Leland H. Hartwell, Tim Hunt, and Paul Nurse Literature – V. S. Naipaul Peace – United Nations, Kofi Annan Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel – George Akerlof, Michael Spence, and Joseph Stiglitz See also Dot-com bubble Early 2000s recession List of earthquakes in 2001 Tropical cyclones in 2001 References Further reading "Review: The Year Everything Changed: 2001 by Phillipa McGuinness by Miriam Cosic, The Australian, June 9, 2018 External links 2001 – The Year in Review, Financial Times