Obituaries
This page lists the obituaries of people who made news during their lifetimes. Obituaries of historians can be found here.
SOURCE: NYT(8-29-12)
David M. Lederman, who led the team of scientists that developed the first fully implantable artificial heart — which, although it had limited success, prompted further advances in the treatment of late-stage heart disease — died on Aug. 15 at his home in Marblehead, Mass. He was 68.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, his son, Jonathan, said.
Dr. Lederman, an aerospace engineer, founded a small company called Abiomed in 1981, with the hopes of extending lives while providing a greater degree of independence for gravely debilitated heart patients awaiting a transplant. Working with Dr. Robert Kung, the company’s chief scientific officer, he brought together a research team (including other aerospace engineers) that designed the AbioCor....
SOURCE: NYT(8-29-12)
Malcolm W. Browne, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter whose four-decade career included covering the Vietnam War — and taking one of the most memorable photos of the conflict — and a lively second act as a science writer who explained chemical weapons and described the rise of synthetic body parts, died on Monday in Hanover, N.H. He was 81.
The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, said his wife, Le Lieu Browne.
Mr. Browne, who lived in Thetford Center, Vt., and Manhattan, spent most of his career writing for The New York Times, which sent him to Argentina, Vietnam, Bosnia, Pakistan and wherever else his curiosity called him after he became a science writer in the late 1970s.
“My life is terrific,” Mr. Browne said in a 1993 interview. “It affords the greatest possible variety of experience. That, after all, is why I became a journalist.”...
SOURCE: NYT(8-25-12)
Neil Armstrong, who made the “giant leap for mankind” as the first human to set foot on the moon, died on Saturday. He was 82.
His family said in a statement that the cause was “complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures.” He had undergone heart bypass surgery this month in Cincinnati, near where he lived. His recovery had been going well, according to those who spoke with him after the surgery, and his death came as a surprise to many close to him, including his fellow Apollo astronauts. The family did not say where he died.
A quiet, private man, at heart an engineer and crack test pilot, Mr. Armstrong made history on July 20, 1969, as the commander of the Apollo 11 spacecraft on the mission that culminated the Soviet-American space race in the 1960s. President John F. Kennedy had committed the nation “to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.” It was done with more than five months to spare....
SOURCE: NYT(8-18-12)
Karl Fleming, a former Newsweek reporter who dodged bullets and choked on tear gas while covering some of the most momentous events of the civil rights era, died on Aug. 11 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 84.
The cause was respiratory illness, his son Charles said.
A son of the South, Mr. Fleming was in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on June 11, 1963, when Gov. George C. Wallace fulfilled his pledge to “stand in the schoolhouse door” and then stepped aside when handed a presidential order to allow two black students to enroll at the University of Alabama. Days later, Mr. Fleming was in Jackson, Miss., reporting on the murder of the civil rights leader Medgar Evers.
He covered the Freedom Summer of 1964, when college students from around the country went to Mississippi to join in a voter registration drive. And after three of those volunteers — Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman — were jailed, released and found shot to death weeks later, Mr. Fleming was one of the first two reporters to arrive in Philadelphia, Miss....
