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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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82
Born 1940-09-05. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
Jo Raquel Welch (née Tejada) was an American actress and model. In 1995, Welch was chosen by Empire magazine as one of the "100 Sexiest Stars in Film History". Playboy ranked Welch No. 3 on their "100 Sexiest Stars of the Twentieth Century" list. Welch died at her home in Los Angeles, following a brief illness. She was 82.
77
Born 1939-10-26. Domain:Religious. Cause of death:Operation
He was a Tibetan Buddhist lama born in Lhasa, Tibet . His personal name was Gelek; kyabje and rimpoche, are titles meaning "teacher" (lit., "lord of refuge") and "precious," respectively. He was a tulku, an incarnate lama of Drepung Monastic University, where he received the scholastic degree of Geshe Lharampa, the highest degree given, at the exceptionally young age of 20. The 14th Dalai Lama said "he completed his traditional Buddhist training as a monk in Tibet prior to the Chinese Takeover." Gelek Rinpoche died in Ann Arbor, Michigan after undergoing surgery the previous month.
89
Born 1922-05-07. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
He was a French stage, film and television actor. He was born in Toulouse.
91
Born 1920-12-09. Domain:Science (Physics style). Cause of death:Age
Cyril Domb was a physicist best known for his lecturing and writing on the theory of phase transitions and critical phenomena of fluids. He was also known in the Orthodox Jewish world for his writings on Science and Judaism.
83
Born 1927-05-18. Domain:Writing. Cause of death:Age
He was a French journalist and writer, a member of 30 years of the Academy Goncourt. He was akinetic from the beginning of the 2000's, and suffered of the Parkinson disease. He called it "Miss P."
93
Born 1913-12-04. Domain:Science (Physics style). Cause of death:Heart
The "Flashmatic" remote control, invented by Eugene Polley, another engineer at Zenith, was the first wireless remote control, replacing the signal cable based remote control devices, which never were a success. The Flashmatic used directional flashlight in the transmitter device, and photo cells in the television set itself. One of the major shortcomings of this technology was that if the television set was exposed to direct sunlight, it could trigger one of the remote control functions inadvertently due to the lack of sufficient protection circuitry, which is why the engineers at Zenith had to go back to the drawing board.
The Zenith Space Command remote controlThe idea of a radio based system was briefly mentioned, but radio waves travel through walls, and a scenario where a remote control inadvertently changes channels, or performs other commands on a television set located next door, led to that idea quickly being abandoned. Furthermore, the marketing people at Zenith requested a remote control which did not require batteries, as it was perceived at the time that if the battery died, the customer might think something was wrong with the television set itself.
This is where Adler and his remote control concept came in. His idea was to use sound to communicate with a television set instead of light. The first remote control he developed, the "Space Command", used aluminium rods, analogous to tuning forks, struck by hammers toggled by the buttons on the device, to produce high-frequency tones that would be interpreted to control functions by the television set.
In the 1960s, Adler modified the remote control to use ultrasonic signals, a technology which went on to be used in television sets manufactured in the next 25 years.
83
Born 1922-08-22. Domain:Journalism. Cause of death:Age
He was a journalist and former member of the 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne. He is known for discussing his role in The Sorrow and the Pity and also wrote a book titled The Captive Dreamer. He later worked for the magazine version of Le Figaro and served as an advisor to Togolese military ruler Gnassingbé Eyadéma.
60
Born 1944-05-25. Domain:Music. Cause of death:Cancer
His songs from the film Emmanuelle called Emmanuelle In The Mirror and Theme From Emmanuelle have been sampled in the Lily Allen single Littlest Things, released in December 2006.
80
Born 1924-03-01. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
The educator in "Les grandes gueules".
44
Born 1960-00-00. Domain:Journalism. Cause of death:Accident
During the night of March 27-28, 1996, seven monks of the Cistercian Monastery of Our Lady of Atlas, near the village of Tibhirine in Algeria, were abducted by a radical faction of the GIA (Groupe Islamique Armée). On May 23, the GIA announced that the monks had been executed on May 21, 1996. Their remains were identified and their funeral Mass was celebrated in the Catholic Cathedral of Algiers on Sunday, June 2. They were buried in the cemetery of their monastery at Tibhirine on June 4, 1996.
The men executed were Dom Christian de Chergé, Brother Luc Dochier, Father Christophe Lebreton, Brother Michel Fleury, Father Bruno Lemarchand, Father Célestin Ringeard, and Brother Paul Favre-Miville.
Didier Contant was making investigations about that killing, when he died dubiously in an unexplained fall of a building in Paris.
59
Born 1930-10-18. Domain:Directing. Cause of death:Cancer (lung)
One of his films he made in 1960 was titled "on enterre pas le dimanche".
69
Born 1918-05-11. Domain:Science (Physics style). Cause of death:Cancer
He was an American physicist known for the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as work in particle physics (the parton model was proposed by him). For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman was a joint recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, together with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga.
He said:
"There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number.
But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit!
We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them
economical numbers."
In Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, he gives advice on the best way to pick up a girl in a hostess bar. At Caltech, he used a nude/topless bar as an office away from his usual office, making sketches or writing physics equations on paper placemats. When the county officials tried to close the locale, all visitors except Feynman refused to testify in favor of the bar, fearing that their families or patrons would learn about their visits. Only Feynman accepted, and in court, he affirmed that the bar was a public need, stating that craftsmen, technicians, engineers, common workers "and a physics professor" frequented the establishment. While the bar lost the court case, it was allowed to remain open as a similar case was pending appeal.
He was unfortunate in developing two rare forms of cancer, namely Liposarcoma and Waldenström macroglobulinemia, dying shortly after a final attempt at surgery for the former. His last recorded words are noted as "I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring."
74
Born 1905-04-18. Domain:Writing. Cause of death:Unknown
Du mouron pour les petits oiseaux.