×
Tait Peter Guthrie (b. 1831-04-28 / d. 1901-07-04)
Peter Guthrie Tait FRSE was a Scottish mathematical physicist and early pioneer in thermodynamics. He is best known for the mathematical physics textbook Treatise on Natural Philosophy, which he co-wrote with Kelvin, and his early investigations into knot theory. His work on knot theory contributed to the eventual formation of topology as a mathematical discipline. His name is known in graph theory mainly for Tait's conjecture. He is also one of the namesakes of the Tait-Kneser theorem on osculating circles.
Lookup: name or firstname or alias or date (yyyy-mm-dd):
87
Born 1935-09-29. Domain:Music. Cause of death:Age
Jerry Lee Lewis was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. Nicknamed "The Killer", he was described as "rock & roll's first great wild man". A pioneer of rock and roll and rockabilly music, Lewis made his first recordings in 1952 at Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studio in New Orleans, Louisiana, and early recordings in 1956 at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee. "Crazy Arms" sold 300,000 copies in the Southern United States, but it was his 1957 hit "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" that shot Lewis to worldwide fame. He followed this with the major hits "Great Balls of Fire", "Breathless", and "High School Confidential". His rock and roll career faltered in the wake of his marriage to Myra Gale Brown, his 13-year-old cousin once removed.
91
Born 1926-03-16. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
He was an American comedian, actor, singer, filmmaker, and humanitarian, dubbed "The King of Comedy" and "The Total Filmmaker". He gained his career breakthrough with singer Dean Martin, becoming Martin & Lewis in 1946 and would perform together for ten years until their acrimonious breakup in 1956. Lewis pursued a solo career, starring in several theatrical movies, worked behind-the-scenes as director, producer and screenwriter, performed comedy routines on stage, released many albums as a singer. Lewis suffered from a number of chronic health problems, illnesses and addictions related both to aging and a back injury sustained in a comedic pratfall. In its aftermath, Lewis became addicted to the painkiller Percodan for thirteen years. He said he had been off the drug since 1978. In April 2002, Lewis had a Medtronic "Synergy" neurostimulator implanted in his back, which helped reduce the discomfort. He was one of the company's leading spokesmen. Lewis suffered numerous heart problems throughout his life; he revealed in the 2011 documentary Method to the Madness of Jerry Lewis, that he suffered his first heart attack at age 34 while filming Cinderfella in 1960. In December 1982, he had another heart attack. Several months later, in February 1983, Lewis underwent emergency open-heart double-bypass surgery. En route to San Diego from New York City on a cross-country commercial airline flight on June 11, 2006, Lewis suffered his third heart attack. It was discovered that he had pneumonia, as well as a severely damaged heart. He underwent a cardiac catheterization days after the heart attack, and two stents were inserted into one of his coronary arteries, which was 90 percent blocked. The surgery resulted in increased blood flow to his heart and allowed him to continue his rebound from earlier lung problems. Having the cardiac catheterization meant canceling several major events from his schedule, but Lewis fully recuperated in a matter of weeks. In 1999, Lewis' Australian tour was cut short when he had to be hospitalized in Darwin with viral meningitis. He was ill for more than five months. It was reported in the Australian press that he had failed to pay his medical bills. However, Lewis maintained that the payment confusion was the fault of his health insurer. The resulting negative publicity caused him to sue his insurer for US$100 million. In addition to his decades-long heart problems, Lewis had prostate cancer, type 1 diabetes, and pulmonary fibrosis. Prednisone treatment in the late 1990s for pulmonary fibrosis resulted in considerable weight gain and a startling change in his appearance. In September 2001, Lewis was unable to perform at a planned London charity event at the London Palladium. He was the headlining act, and he was introduced but did not appear. He had suddenly become unwell, apparently with heart problems. He was subsequently taken to the hospital. Some months thereafter, Lewis began an arduous, months-long therapy that weaned him off prednisone and he lost much of the weight gained while on the drug. The treatment enabled him to return to work. On June 12, 2012, he was treated and released from a hospital after collapsing from hypoglycemia at a New York Friars Club event. This latest health issue forced him to cancel a show in Sydney. In an October 2016 interview with Inside Edition, Lewis acknowledged that he might not star in any more films, given his advanced age, while admitting, through tears, that he was afraid of dying, as it would leave his wife and daughter alone. In June 2017, LLewis was hospitalized at a Las Vegas hospital for a urinary tract infection. The cause of his death was end-stage cardiac disease and peripheral artery disease.
90
Born 1926-06-15. Domain:Directing. Cause of death:Age
He was an American filmmaker, best known for creating the "splatter" subgenre of horror films. He is often called the "Godfather of Gore" (a title also given to Lucio Fulci), though his film career included works in a range of exploitation film genres including juvenile delinquent films, nudie-cuties, two children's films and at least one rural comedy. On Lewis' career, AllMovie wrote, "With his better-known gore films, Herschell Gordon Lewis was a pioneer, going farther than anyone else dared, probing the depths of disgust and discomfort onscreen with more bad taste and imagination than anyone of his era."
79
Born 1935-07-31. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
Geoffrey Bond Lewis was an American character actor. He appeared in more than 200 films and television shows, and was principally known for his film roles alongside Clint Eastwood and Robert Redford. He typically portrayed villains or quirky characters. He played a bodyguard in the Jean-Claude van Damme film Double Impact.
71
Born 1942-03-02. Domain:Music. Cause of death:alcohol, other drugs
He was an American rock musician and songwriter. After being guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of the Velvet Underground, his solo career spanned several decades. In May 2013, Reed underwent a liver transplant in Cleveland. Afterwards he claimed on his website to be "bigger and stronger" than ever. On October 27, 2013, Reed died at the age of 71 from liver disease at his home in Southampton, New York, on Long Island. His physician Charles Miller noted that Reed "was fighting right up to the very end. He was doing his Tai Chi exercises within an hour of his death, trying to keep strong and keep fighting."
75
Born 1936-04-12. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
Charles Lewis Napier was an American character actor in film and television known for his prolific career playing memorable supporting and leading roles in genre cinema, often in the role of a police officer, soldier, or authority figure. After leaving his Kentucky hometown to serve in the army, he graduated from college and worked as a sports coach and art teacher before settling on acting as a career. Napier established himself in character roles and worked steadily for the next 35 years. He made numerous collaborations with director Jonathan Demme, including roles in the critically acclaimed drama Philadelphia, comedy Married to the Mob, historical horror-drama Beloved, the political-thriller remake The Manchurian Candidate, and the Best Picture-winning psychological horror film adaptation The Silence of the Lambs. Other notable roles include the short-tempered country singer Tucker McElroy in The Blues Brothers, gruff army Commander Gilmour in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, and bureaucratic CIA officer Marshall Murdock in Rambo: First Blood Part II. He also had numerous voiceover roles in television, most notably the character of Duke Phillips on the prime time animated sitcom The Critic and Agent Zed on Men in Black: The Series. Napier died after collapsing the previous day. He was 75 years old. The exact cause of death was not released, but Napier had been treated for deep vein thrombosis in his legs in May 2010.
81
Born 1928-11-23. Domain:Music. Cause of death:Age
Jerry Bock was an American musical theater composer. He received the Tony Award for Best Musical and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama with Sheldon Harnick for their 1959 musical Fiorello! and the Tony Award for Best Composer and Lyricist for the 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof with Harnick.
Bock spoke at the funeral of 98-year-old Fiddler playwright Joseph Stein just 10 days before his own death, from heart failure.
41
Born 1969-04-26. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Murder
She was an American murderer and the only woman on death row in Virginia prior to her execution.
Lewis was sentenced to death for hiring two men to kill her husband, Julian Clifton Lewis, Jr., and her stepson, Charles J. Lewis, in their Pittsylvania County home on the night of October 30, 2002. Her stepson had a $250,000 life insurance policy from his military service, with Julian Lewis as the primary beneficiary and Lewis as the secondary beneficiary. The motive for the murder on the eve of the stepson's deployment, according to a later interview, was to collect the life insurance money. Her two accomplices, Matthew Jessee Shallenberger, then 21, and his former roommate and friend Rodney Lamont Fuller, then 19, were sentenced to life terms at their separate trials. Schallenberger committed suicide in prison in 2006.
Lewis was executed on September 23, 2010, at 9 p.m. by lethal injection, at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt.
Lewis' lawyer stated that “She’s not mentally retarded, but she is very, very close to it."
85
Born 1923-04-22. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
Mr Cale in Quadrophenia (1979).
91
Born 1903-12-10. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
George J. Lewis was a Mexican-born actor who appeared in many films and eventually TV series from the 1920s through the 1960s, usually specializing in westerns. He is probably best known for playing Don Alejandro de la Vega, who was Don Diego de la Vega's father in the 1950s Disney television series Zorro. Lewis co-starred in Zorro's Black Whip (in which a Zorro-like character was a woman played by Linda Stirling) and had a minor role in Ghost of Zorro before starring as Don Alejandro in the Disney series.
27
Born 1965-11-21. Domain:Sport. Cause of death:Heart attack
He was an American professional basketball player for the NBA's Boston Celtics from 1987 to 1993. Lewis suffered sudden cardiac death on the basketball court at an off-season practice on July 27, 1993 at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He was only 27 years old. Lewis had shown symptoms of heart problems in the preceding months (including collapsing during the opening game of their first-round playoff series with the Charlotte Hornets), and the cause of his death was subsequently attributed to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a structural heart defect that is considered the most common cause of death in young athletes.
70
Born 1909-07-23. Domain:Painting. Cause of death:Age
He passed away unexpectedly in 1979 in New York.
67
Born 1903-03-07. Domain:Painting. Cause of death:Pneumonia
Maud Kathleen Lewis (née Dowley) was a Canadian folk artist from Nova Scotia. Lewis lived most of her life in poverty in a small house in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia, achieving national recognition in 1964 and 1965. Several books, plays and films have since been produced about her. Lewis remains one of Canada's best-known folk artists; her works and the restored Maud Lewis House are displayed in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. In the last year of her life, Maud Lewis stayed in one corner of her house, painting as often as she could while traveling back and forth to the hospital for treatment of health issues. She died in Digby from pneumonia. Her husband Everett was killed in 1979 by a burglar during an attempted robbery of the couple's house.
27
Born 1942-02-28. Domain:Music. Cause of death:Unknown
He was a founding member, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist in the English rock group The Rolling Stones.
At around midnight on 3 July 1969, Jones was discovered motionless at the bottom of his swimming pool at his home in Hartfield, Sussex, England. His Swedish girlfriend, Anna Wohlin, is convinced he was alive when they took him out, insisting he still had a pulse. However, by the time the doctors arrived, it was too late, and he was pronounced dead. The coroner's report stated "Death by misadventure", and noted his liver and heart were heavily enlarged by drug and alcohol abuse.Some felt it was suicide, however, blaming Jagger and Richards for his state of mental depression.
Wohlin claimed in 1999 that Jones had been murdered by a builder who had been renovating the house the couple shared. The builder, Frank Thorogood, allegedly confessed to the murder on his deathbed to the Rolling Stones' driver, Tom Keylock; however, there were no other witnesses. In ("The Murder Of Brian Jones"), Wohlin alleges that Thorogood behaved suspiciously and showed little sympathy when Jones was discovered in the pool (he was the last to see Brian alive), but she admits she was not present at Jones's death. Witnesses who claim to have seen the 'murder' have been interviewed by journalists; however, these witnesses have almost always used pseudonyms, and none has been willing to go on record or report to the police. A critical witness, still alive, is a man called 'Marty' in the Hotchner book 'Blown Away'. Another builder present, called Mo(rris) passed away a couple of years ago.
Many items, such as instruments and expensive furniture, were stolen from the home after Jones's death, most likely by Thorogood, driver Tom Keylock, and others who worked on the property. Rumours also exist that recordings by Jones for his future projects were stolen but nothing has surfaced to date. A watch given by Alexis Korner to Brian, with a personal inscription, surfaced at Christie's in New York.
Upon Jones' death, Pete Townshend wrote a poem titled "A Normal Day For Brian, A Man Who Died Every Day" (printed in The Times), Jimi Hendrix dedicated a song to him on U.S. television, and Jim Morrison of The Doors wrote a published poem entitled Ode To L.A. While Thinking Of Brian Jones, Deceased.
28
Born 1930-04-20. Domain:Sport. Cause of death:Accident
Stuart Nigel Lewis-Evans was a British racing driver, who competed in Formula One at 14 Grands Prix from 1957 to 1958. Born in Luton and raised in Kent, Lewis-Evans served in the Royal Corps of Signals before starting his racing career in 1951, driving a Cooper 500. After winning the non-championship 1957 Glover Trophy, he debuted in Formula One at the Monaco Grand Prix with Connaught. Lewis-Evans contested five further Grands Prix in 1957 with Vanwall, taking his maiden pole position at the Italian Grand Prix before retiring with engine issues. Retaining his seat for 1958, Lewis-Evans also retired from pole at the Dutch Grand Prix, before taking his maiden podiums in Belgium and Portugal. Lewis-Evans crashed heavily at the dusty Ain-Diab Circuit during the season-ending Moroccan Grand Prix. His car's engine seized and sent him lurching into barriers at high speed, where it burst into flames. He was airlifted back to the UK, but died of his burns in hospital six days after the accident. His death cast a pall over Vanwall's victory in the 1958 International Cup for F1 Manufacturers, an achievement to which Lewis-Evans had contributed significantly. Vandervell never fully recovered from Lewis-Evans's death and withdrew from motorsport at the end of 1958.