He died of cancer at the age of 61.
He did the music for films such as Conan the Barbarian, The Hunt for Red October, RoboCop, and Starship Troopers.
In my opinion, Conan the Barbarian has one of the greatest film scores of all time. If I ever get cornered by angry barbarians in search of my scalp, I'm going to make my last stand while singing "Vale caelum, vale terra, vale nivis, morimur! Vale, morimur servis fati!" In the unlikely case that you didn't see any of the above films, you can hear clips from Conan here. Of course, if you've seen the previews for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, you have already heard "Riders of Doom".
[url]http://www.amazon.com/Conan-Barbarian-Original-Picture-Soundtrack/dp/B0000014T1/sr=1-2/qid=1163526553/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/002-0384389-1612846?ie=UTF8&s=music[/url]
I was very disappointed to learn of his death from Blue's News and not the IMDB, which I go to every day. Then again, that's not really a big suprise. I think composers are vastly underappreciated in Hollywood. When Jerry Goldsmith died, he just got a brief clip in the Academy Awards "In Memorium..." segment, and I don't think they even played the theme from Star Trek or Planet of the Apes.