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Cowan George (b. 1920-02-15 / d. 2012-04-20)
He was an American physical chemist, a businessman and philanthropist. Cowan received a B.S. from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1941. He did graduate studies at Princeton, where he worked under future Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner, whose investigation of uranium confirmed the feasibility of the Fermi pile. He continued his nuclear research with the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago, Oak Ridge, Columbia University, and Los Alamos. Because he was transferred to various locations as a technological troubleshooter for the effort, he was among the very few people with knowledge of the separate components of the bomb, kept apart for security reasons. He joined the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1946. He earned a Ph.D. from the Mellon College of Science in 1950. Weeks after his arrival at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1949, he directed the detection of radioactive fallout from samples collected near the Russian border indicating the Soviets were in possession of a nuclear bomb. He later served on the Bethe Panel that convinced government decision makers the radiochemistry detected represented weapons uses rather than peaceful pursuits.
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87
Born 1915-02-18. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
85
Born 1917-01-16. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
He was a veteran actor of dozens of character roles of film and television, who regularly appeared in Jerry Lewis features, including The Patsy, The Ladies Man, The Nutty Professor, Three on a Couch, Smorgasbord, Hardly Working", and The Big Mouth.
58
Born 1943-11-26. Domain:Directing. Cause of death:Cancer
Paltrow died while vacationing in Rome, Italy, to celebrate his daughter's (Gwyneth) 30th birthday. He had suffered from oral cancer for several years, and his death was due to complications from cancer and pneumonia. In 2007, his widow, in cooperation with The Oral Cancer Foundation, set up a fund in his name to address the oral cancer issues in the US. The foundation works primarily in the areas of public awareness, early detection, patient support functions and research.
76
Born 1925-12-17. Domain:Writing. Cause of death:Age
He is best known for his 1965 novel L'Adoration (translated into English as The Bond), which won the Prix Goncourt.
59
Born 1942-12-20. Domain:Sport. Cause of death:Cancer
Hayes died in his hometown Jacksonville of kidney failure aged 59, after battling prostate cancer and liver ailments.
At the 1964 Summer Olympics, in Tokyo, Hayes had his finest hour as a sprinter. First, he won the 100 m by tying the current World Record in the 100 m with a time of 10.0 seconds, even though he was running in lane 1 which had, the day before, been used for the 10km and this badly chewed up the cinder track. He also was running in borrowed spikes because one of his shoes had been kicked under the bed when he was playing with some friends and he didn't realize until he got there. This was followed by a second gold medal in the 4 x 100 m relay, which also produced a new World Record (39.06 seconds).
90
Born 1911-12-23. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
He was an American character actor noted for playing brash roles such as McCarthy-like Senator Joseph Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), the audacious General Ursus in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and loudmouthed Inspector Luger in Barney Miller (TV-Series 1975 - 1982). He also played Dean Martin's spy boss MacDonald, in the Matt Helm movie series, and is fondly remembered for his role as Dr. Tristan Adams, the villainous director of the Tantalus IV Penal Colony on the Star Trek Original Series episode, Dagger of the Mind.
41
Born 1961-05-15. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Other
She became well known for her film work with directors such as Mike Leigh and Lars von Trier.
Cartlidge died aged 41 of complications from pneumonia and septicaemia, stemming from a pheochromocytoma.
A phaeochromocytoma (pheochromocytoma in the US) is a neuroendocrine tumor of the medulla of the adrenal glands (originating in the chromaffin cells) or extra-adrenal chromaffin tissue which failed to involute after birth, which secretes excessive amounts of catecholamines, usually epinephrine and norepinephrine. Extra-adrenal paragangliomas (often described as extra-adrenal pheochromocytomas) are closely related, though less common, tumors that originate in the ganglia of the sympathetic nervous system and are named based upon the primary anatomical site of origin.
Traditionally it is known as the "10% tumor":
bilateral disease is present in approximately 10% of patients
approximately 10% of tumours are malignant
approximately 10% are located in chromaffin tissue outside of the adrenal gland
approximately 10% arise in childhood
approximately 10% are familial
approximately 10% recur after being resected
89
Born 1913-08-27. Domain:Science (Physics style). Cause of death:Age
He was co-discoverer (with Sam Ruben) of the isotope carbon-14 on February 27, 1940, at the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Berkeley.
Kamen was a target and victim of American anti-communist fervor in the 1940s and 1950s. He described his experiences during this era in his autobiography, Radiant Science, Dark Politics. He first aroused suspicion while working at Oak Ridge. A cyclotron operator prepared radioactive sodium for an experiment, and Kamen was surprised that the resulting sodium had a purple glow, indicating it was much more intensely radioactive than could be produced in a cyclotron. Kamen recognized immediately that the sodium must have been irradiated in a nuclear reactor elsewhere in the facility. Because of wartime secrecy, he had not been aware of the reactor's existence. He excitedly told his colleagues about his discovery. Shortly thereafter, an investigation was launched to find out who had leaked the information to Kamen.
The House Committee on Un-American Activities summoned Kamen to testify in 1948. A Congressional investigation established that Russians had received classified information from Kamen concerning uranium stockpiles. Subsequently the State Department refused to issue him a passport. In 1951 the Chicago Tribune named him as a suspected spy. Kamen attempted suicide. After a 10-year effort to establish his innocence and prove that he had been blacklisted as a security risk, he won a libel suit against the Tribune in 1955 and was able once again to obtain a passport.
74
Born 1928-07-17. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
Jean Saudray was a French actor.
88
Born 1914-08-01. Domain:Directing. Cause of death:Age
He was an English film director, active in England and Hollywood.
Thompson vaulted to international fame with The Guns of Navarone (1961) as a last-minute replacement for director Alexander Mackendrick. His take-charge attitude during its production earned him the nickname 'Mighty Mouse' from lead actor Gregory Peck. The Guns of Navarone, a World War II epic filmed on location in Rhodes, Greece, was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Thompson for Best Director.
The success of that film won him entry into Hollywood, where he directed Cape Fear (1962), a psychological thriller with Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, Polly Bergen, and Lori Martin. Based on a novel called The Executioners by John D. MacDonald, Cape Fear boldly shows how a sex offender can manipulate the justice system and terrorize an entire family. Highly controversial for its time, the film was cut heavily in both the United States and Britain.
46
Born 1956-00-00. Domain:TV/Radio. Cause of death:Suicide
He was a presenter of 'matin-bonheur'. He could not bear having been fired form TV.
88
Born 1914-08-10. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
He made guest appearances in many TV shows. His best known appearances in the science fiction community were in The Outer Limits episode "O.B.I.T." and the Star Trek season 3 episode "The Cloud Minders" as High Advisor Plasus and on Babylon 5 as Justin in the season 3 finale "Z'ha'dum".
30
Born 1972-02-29. Domain:Music. Cause of death:Heart
He was the lead singer for the band Drowning Pool.
Williams died from cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle. He was not previously diagnosed with the disease, and the cause remains unknown.
72
Born 1930-05-11. Domain:Science (Math style). Cause of death:Age
He was a Dutch computer scientist. He received the 1972 Turing Award for fundamental contributions to developing programming languages, and was the Schlumberger Centennial Chair of Computer Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin from 1984 until 2000. Despite having invented much of the technology of software, Dijkstra eschewed the use of computers in his own work for many decades. Almost all EWDs appearing after 1972 were hand-written. When lecturing, he would write proofs in chalk on a blackboard rather than using overhead foils, let alone Powerpoint slides. Even after he succumbed to his UT colleagues’ encouragement and acquired a Macintosh computer, he used it only for e-mail and for browsing the World Wide Web. He died in Nuenen on August 6, 2002 after a long struggle with cancer.
64
Born 1938-04-01. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Cancer
Peter Miles was the stage name of American child actor Gerald Richard Perreau-Saussine. After his film career ended, he turned to writing under the pen name Richard Miles
77
Born 1925-04-14. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Pneumonia
He died in Los Angeles of pneumonia and complications from surgery for a (presumably malignant) gall bladder tumor at the age of 77. He is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills, in Los Angeles, California.
80
Born 1922-01-06. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
Guy-Henry was a French actor, notable for roles in films including the uncredited appearance in Légère et court vêtue. He was active from 1940 to 1970.
72
Born 1930-02-19. Domain:Directing. Cause of death:Stroke
He was scheduled to direct a prequel to The Exorcist but died suddenly in Los Angeles, California, from a stroke due to complications following spinal surgery at the age of 72, shortly before filming started.
87
Born 1915-03-05. Domain:Science (Math style). Cause of death:Age
In 1948 Laurent Schwartz visited Sweden to present his distributions to the local mathematicians. He had the opportunity of conversing with Marcel Riesz. Having written on the blackboard the integration-by-parts formula to explain the idea of a weak derivative, he was interrupted by Riesz saying, “I hope you have found something else in your life.” Later Schwarz told Riesz of his hopes that the following theorem would eventually be proved: every linear partial differential equation with constant coefficients has a fundamental solution (a concept made precise and general by distribution theory). “Madness!” exclaimed Riesz. “This is a project for the twentyfirst century!” The general theorem was proved by Ehrenpreis and Malgrange in 1952. At the end of the twentieth century, there were proofs of it in ten lines.
76
Born 1926-06-05. Domain:Science (Math style). Cause of death:Age
He was a French mathematician, recognized as one of the modern founders of combinatorics and graph theory.
He wrote five books, on game theory (1957), graph theory and its applications (1958), topological spaces (1959), principles of combinatorics (1968) and hypergraphs (1970), each being translated in several languages and becoming a classic.
Berge co-founded the French literary group Oulipo with novelists and other mathematicians in 1960 to create new forms of literature. In this association, he wrote a murder mystery based on a mathematical theorem: Who killed the Duke of Densmore?
He received the EURO X gold medal from the European Association of Operational Research in 1989 and the Euler Prize in 1995.
82
Born 1919-11-10. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Heart attack
58
Born 1943-08-13. Domain:Sport. Cause of death:Heart attack
He was a four-time Grand Prix motorcycle road racing world champion. He was known for his quiet, unassuming nature off the bike who became a ruthless competitor once the races began. He was said to be, though involuntarily, at the origin of Saarinen's fatal race crash. He died in his sleep from a heart attack.
61
Born 1940-10-27. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Cancer
Gotti was tried in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York before the Honorable I. Leo Glasser. The federal prosecutor's evidence was overwhelming. Not only did they have Gotti on tape, they also had several witnesses to testify against Gotti.
On June 23, 1992, Judge Glasser sentenced Gotti to life imprisonment without possibility of parole.
Gotti paid the notorious prison gang the Aryan Brotherhood $50,000 a year for protection. However, in 1996 Gotti insulted Walter Johnson, a black inmate on the prison yard with racial slurs. The black inmate later assaulted Gotti. Gotti felt completely disrespected and paid the Aryan Brotherhood $500,000 to kill Gotti's attacker. However, Gotti died of cancer soon afterwards and the murder was never carried out.
50
Born 1951-09-18. Domain:Music. Cause of death:alcohol, other drugs
Douglas Glenn Colvin, known professionally as Dee Dee Ramone, was a German-American songwriter and musician, best known as founding member, songwriter and bassist for punk rock band the Ramones. Dee Dee struggled with drug addiction for much of his life, particularly heroin. He began using drugs as a teenager, and continued to use for the majority of his adult life. He appeared clean in the early 1990s but began using heroin again some time later. Dee Dee Ramone was found dead on the evening of June 5, 2002 by his wife Barbara at his apartment in Hollywood, California. An autopsy established heroin overdose as the official cause of death. He had been booked to perform at the Majestic Ventura Theater, which ended up being a memorial show in his honor.