Passings

Ronald Bracewell, the Stanford University polymath who developed mathematical techniques for producing images with radiotelescopes that are now widely used in CT and MRI imaging for medicine, died of a heart attack at his home on campus July 12.

Ralph Alpher, the “forgotten father of the Big Bang” whose calculations provided the theoretical underpinning of the theory but were ignored when it came time to pass out Nobel Prizes, died Sunday at an acute care facility in Austin, Texas.

Yone Minagawa, recognized as the world’s oldest living person, died Monday at a hospital in Fukuoka Prefecture in Japan, according to news reports.

The efforts of the Swedish scientist now allow for assays of corrosion of metal surfaces, identification of contaminants and many other applications.

Paul Bohannan, the USC anthropologist who was the world’s leading expert on the Tiv culture of Nigeria and who coined the phrase “the divorce industry” in his groundbreaking books on U.S. divorce, died July 13 at his home in Visalia, Calif.

Daniel E.

Goodwin, who led the Nature Conservancy and negotiated the conservation group’s first land purchase in California, was 96.

Odile Speed Crick, the bohemian painter of nudes whose most famous drawing was an illustration of DNA that appeared in a seminal paper by her husband, Francis Crick, and James Watson on its structure, died July 5 in La Jolla after a short illness.

Dr. George W.

Dr. Ralph S.

Dr.

Ferd Eggan, whose innovative efforts as city AIDS coordinator included sponsoring Los Angeles’ first needle exchange program to reduce the transmission of AIDS through contaminated syringes, died Saturday of liver cancer at his home in Hollywood.

John Todd, the Caltech mathematician who was a pioneer in the development of numerical analysis for computers and played a key role in the development of some of the first large computers, has died.

Dr.

Brian Walton, a scientific researcher who helped lead efforts to restore the once-endangered peregrine falcon to West Coast habitats, has died.

Don Herbert, who explained the wonderful world of science to millions of young baby boomers on television in the 1950s and ‘60s as “Mr.

Homer J.

Edwin Traisman, a food researcher who helped create Cheez Whiz and, as an early McDonald’s franchise owner in Wisconsin, co-developed the freezing process used to make McDonald’s French fries, has died.

At the “happiest place on Earth,” Bettye Travis was so focused on her young daughters’ visit with Mickey Mouse, Cinderella and Snow White that she did not notice the small group of tourists focusing on her.

Earl Ubell, a journalist who covered the leading health and science breakthroughs of the postwar age with a lively and effective style, died Wednesday at a nursing facility in Englewood, N.J.

Stanley Miller, the UC San Diego chemist who was the first to demonstrate that the organic molecules necessary for life could be generated in a laboratory flask simulating the primitive Earth’s atmosphere, died Sunday from heart failure in a hospital in National City.

Inside a rusted Quonset hut at the Long Beach Naval Station, Dr. Joseph J.

Nobel Prize-winning scientist Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, who was dubbed the “Isaac Newton of our time” for his pioneering research on liquid crystals, has died.

Walter M.

Carl Friedrich von Weizsaecker, 94, a German physicist who researched atomic weapons for the Nazis and became a philosophy professor who espoused pacifism after World War II, died Saturday after a long illness, his family told the Associated Press in Berlin.

Astrophysicist Bohdan Paczynski, who was the first to suggest that gamma-ray bursters lie outside the Milky Way and who revolutionized astronomy by using gravitational lensing as a tool to search for dark matter and new planets, died April 19 in his Princeton, N.J., home after a three-year battle with brain cancer.

Physicist Paul C.

F.

Dr.

David D.

Dr.

Donald E.

Martin Kruskal, the prolific Princeton mathematician whose work provided a theoretical underpinning for a new form of fiber-optic communications, controlled thermonuclear fusion and the study of black holes, died Dec. 26 at his home in Princeton, N.J., after a series of strokes.