physicist and activist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1921) December 15 José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, Colombian drug lord and criminal (b. 1947) Edward Underdown, British stage and film veteran (b. 1908) December 16 Silvana Mangano, Italian actress (b. 1930) Aileen Pringle, American actress (b. 1895) Lee Van Cleef, American actor (b. 1925) December 17 – Albert C. Wedemeyer, American general (b. 1897) December 19 Herbert Blaize, Grenadian politician, 6th Prime Minister of Grenada (b. 1918) Kirill Mazurov, Soviet politician (b. 1914) December 20 – Kurt Böhme, German bass (b. 1908) December 21 – Ján Cikker, Slovak composer (b. 1911) December 22 Samuel Beckett, Irish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1906) Vasile Milea, Romanian military officer and politician, minister of Defense (b. 1927) December 23 – Richard Rado, German-born British mathematician (b. 1906) December 25 Elena Ceaușescu, Romanian politician, Deputy Prime Minister of Romania (b. 1916) Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romanian politician, dictator and Communist Party head, 1st President of Romania (b. 1918) Billy Martin, American baseball player and manager (b. 1928) December 26 – Lennox Berkeley, English composer (b. 1903) December 28 – Hermann Oberth, Austro-Hungarian-born German engineer, physicist and scientist (b. 1894) December 30 – Yasuji Miyazaki, Japanese Olympic swimmer (b. 1916) December 31 Sir Ignatius Kilage, 4th Governor-General of Papua New Guinea (b. 1941) Mihály Lantos, Hungarian footballer and manager (b. 1928) Gerhard Schröder, German politician (b. 1910) December – Yem Sambaur, 8th Prime Minister of Cambodia (b. 1913) Nobel Prizes Physics – Norman Foster Ramsey Jr., Hans Georg Dehmelt, Wolfgang Paul Chemistry – Sidney Altman, Thomas Cech Medicine – J. Michael Bishop, Harold E. Varmus Literature – Camilo José Cela Peace – Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel – Trygve Haavelmo References Further reading Ash, Timothy Garton. The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of '89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague (1999) excerpt Kenney, Padraic, ed. 1989: Democratic Revolutions at the Cold War's End: A Brief History with Documents (2009) Sebestyen, Victor. Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire (2010) excerpt External links After the fall – Europe after 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev on 1989 – 2009 interview by The Nation Freedom Without Walls: German Missions in the United States Looking Back at the Fall of the Berlin Wall – official homepage in English