Famous University Of Wisconsin-Madison Alumni
Voting Rules
People on this list must have gone to University of Wisconsin-Madison and be of some renown.
- Dick Cheney, born Richard Bruce Cheney on January 30, 1941, in Lincoln, Nebraska, is an astute political figure who has shaped American politics with his indomitable and often controversial strategies. He is best known for serving as the 46th Vice President of the United States under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009. However, his political career spans over four decades, including roles such as the White House Chief of Staff, Secretary of Defense, and U.S. Representative from Wyoming. Cheney's political acumen combined with his relentless pursuit of his beliefs has made him one of the most influential and polarizing figures in modern U.S. history. Cheney's journey to the top echelons of the American government began at Yale University, although he later transferred to the University of Wyoming where he earned both his bachelor's and master's degrees in Political Science. His first foray into politics happened in 1969 when he served as a congressional intern during the Nixon Administration. This experience set the stage for his subsequent appointments, including serving as Chief of Staff for President Gerald Ford and then as Secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush. As Secretary of Defense, Cheney played a crucial role in planning the U.S. response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, leading to the Gulf War in 1991. As Vice President under George W. Bush, Cheney became known for his hardline stance on terrorism following the attacks on September 11, 2001. He was instrumental in formulating the U.S. policy on the War on Terror and was a strong advocate for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite facing criticism and controversy, particularly over his stance on enhanced interrogation techniques, Cheney remained steadfast in his convictions. Beyond his political life, Cheney's personal life has been marked by health challenges, including multiple heart attacks and a heart transplant in 2012. Despite these health issues, Cheney has continued to be an influential figure in American politics, a testament to his resilience and determination.
- Age: 84
- Birthplace: Lincoln, USA, Nebraska
- Charles Lindbergh, born in Detroit, Michigan on February 4, 1902, was an American aviator who achieved worldwide fame as the first person to fly solo and non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean. Born to a congressman father and a schoolteacher mother, his love for machinery and technology was evident from a young age. Lindbergh's early years were marked by frequent moves, following his father's political career, which ultimately led him to develop a strong sense of independence and a curiosity about the world. Lindbergh's fascination with flight took root during his time as a U.S. Air Mail pilot, but it was his daring transatlantic flight in May 1927 that put his name in the history books. In his single-engine plane, "The Spirit of St. Louis," he flew from New York to Paris, covering an astonishing distance of nearly 3,600 miles in thirty-three and a half hours. The feat was not only a triumph of engineering but also a testament to Lindbergh's skill, courage, and unwavering determination. This historic achievement won him the prestigious Orteig Prize and secured his place in aviation history. However, Lindbergh's life was not without controversy. His first-born son was tragically kidnapped and murdered in 1932, a case that became known as "The Crime of the Century". Later, his apparent sympathy towards Nazi Germany prior to World War II stirred public outcry. Yet, despite these tumultuous personal trials and public scrutiny, Lindbergh continued his work in aviation and conservation until his passing in 1974. A complex figure, Charles Lindbergh remains emblematic of the bold spirit of exploration and the relentless pursuit of progress that characterized the early 20th century.
- Age: Dec. at 72 (1902-1974)
- Birthplace: Michigan, USA, Detroit
- John Bardeen (; May 23, 1908 – January 30, 1991) was an American physicist and electrical engineer. He is the only person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics twice: first in 1956 with William Shockley and Walter Brattain for the invention of the transistor; and again in 1972 with Leon N Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer for a fundamental theory of conventional superconductivity known as the BCS theory.The transistor revolutionized the electronics industry, making possible the development of almost every modern electronic device, from telephones to computers, and ushering in the Information Age. Bardeen's developments in superconductivity—for which he was awarded his second Nobel Prize—are used in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) and medical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In 1990, Bardeen appeared on LIFE Magazine's list of "100 Most Influential Americans of the Century."
- Age: Dec. at 82 (1908-1991)
- Birthplace: Madison, Wisconsin
- John Muir (; April 21, 1838 – December 24, 1914) also known as "John of the Mountains" and "Father of the National Parks", was an influential Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, glaciologist, and early advocate for the preservation of wilderness in the United States of America. His letters, essays, and books describing his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada, have been read by millions. His activism has helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park and many other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he co-founded, is a prominent American conservation organization. In his later life, Muir devoted most of his time to the preservation of the Western forests. As part of the campaign to make Yosemite a national park, Muir published two landmark articles on wilderness preservation in The Century Magazine, "The Treasures of the Yosemite" and "Features of the Proposed Yosemite National Park"; this helped support the push for U.S. Congress to pass a bill in 1890 establishing Yosemite National Park. The spiritual quality and enthusiasm toward nature expressed in his writings has inspired readers, including presidents and congressmen, to take action to help preserve large nature areas.John Muir has been considered "an inspiration to both Scots and Americans". Muir's biographer, Steven J. Holmes, believes that Muir has become "one of the patron saints of twentieth-century American environmental activity," both political and recreational. As a result, his writings are commonly discussed in books and journals, and he is often quoted by nature photographers such as Ansel Adams. "Muir has profoundly shaped the very categories through which Americans understand and envision their relationships with the natural world," writes Holmes.Muir was noted for being an ecological thinker, political spokesman, and religious prophet, whose writings became a personal guide into nature for countless individuals, making his name "almost ubiquitous" in the modern environmental consciousness. According to author William Anderson, Muir exemplified "the archetype of our oneness with the earth", while biographer Donald Worster says he believed his mission was "saving the American soul from total surrender to materialism." On April 21, 2013, the first ever John Muir Day was celebrated in Scotland, which marked the 175th anniversary of his birth, paying homage to the conservationist.
- Age: Dec. at 76 (1838-1914)
- Birthplace: Dunbar, United Kingdom
- Although Wisconsin native Daniel J. Travani lacked the conventional looks of a leading man; he proved a capable performer, finding stage roles in NYC, including the 1965 New York Shakespeare Festival production of "Othello" with James Earl Jones and opposite Sada Thompson in the 1972 Broadway play "Twigs."
- Age: 84
- Birthplace: Kenosha, Wisconsin, USA
- Marcia Carolyn Kaptur (; born June 17, 1946) is the U.S. Representative for Ohio's 9th congressional district and a Democrat. The district stretches from Kaptur's hometown of Toledo to Cleveland. It includes all of Ottawa and Erie counties, and parts of Lucas, Lorain, and Cuyahoga counties. Currently serving her 19th term in the House of Representatives, Kaptur is currently the dean of Ohio's congressional delegation and the longest-serving woman in the House. In Congress, she is also currently the longest-serving woman in congress and also the second longest-serving woman ever behind Barbara Mikulski. She ranks sixth out of 435 members in seniority and serves on the House Appropriations Committee.
- Age: 78
- Birthplace: Toledo, Ohio, USA
- George Coleman Poage (November 6, 1880 – April 11, 1962) was the first African-American athlete to win a medal in the Olympic Games, winning two bronze medals at the 1904 games in St. Louis.
- Age: Dec. at 81 (1880-1962)
- Birthplace: Hannibal, Missouri
- Carol Ann Bartz (born August 28, 1948) is an American business executive, former president and CEO of the internet services company Yahoo!, and former chairman, president, and CEO at architectural and engineering design software company Autodesk.
- Age: 76
- Birthplace: Winona, Minnesota
- Ernest R. Emerson is an American custom knifemaker, martial artist, and edged-weapons expert. Originally an engineer and machinist in the aerospace industry, Emerson became a knifemaker by producing knives for a martial arts class and making art knives early in his knifemaking career. In the 1980s he became better known for his combat knives and popularizing a style of knife known as the Tactical-folder. In order to secure military contracts, Emerson eventually founded Emerson Knives, Inc a production company to mass-produce his designs in 1996. Emerson's knives have been displayed as museum pieces, designed for use by Navy SEALs and used by NASA in outer space. Emerson's knives have been featured in films and novels, due to their association with military units. This has furthered their popularity with collectors. Emerson is an accomplished martial artist who has developed a combatives system, Emerson Combat Systems, which has been taught to police officers, military units, and civilians.
- Age: 69
- Birthplace: Wisconsin
John P. Morgridge (born 1933) is an American businessman who was the CEO and chairman of the board of Cisco Systems.- Age: 91
- Birthplace: Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
- Willard Harrison Bennett (June 13, 1903 – September 28, 1987) was an American scientist and inventor, born in Findlay, Ohio. Bennett conducted research into plasma physics, astrophysics, geophysics, surface physics, and physical chemistry. The Bennett pinch is named after him.
- Age: Dec. at 84 (1903-1987)
- Birthplace: Findlay, Ohio
- Michael A. Bennett (born August 13, 1978) is a former American football running back in the National Football League. He was drafted by the Minnesota Vikings 27th overall in the 2001 NFL Draft. He played college football at Wisconsin. A Pro Bowl selection with the Vikings in 2002, Bennett has also been a member of the New Orleans Saints, Kansas City Chiefs, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, San Diego Chargers, and Oakland Raiders. He was one of the fastest sprinters in college history clocking in a record 4.13 in the 40-yard dash, the second fastest in NFL history behind only Bo Jackson who ran a 4.12.
- Age: 46
- Birthplace: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
- Virginia Apgar (June 7, 1909 – August 7, 1974) was an American obstetrical anesthesiologist, best known as the inventor of the Apgar Score, a way to quickly assess the health of a newborn child immediately after birth. She was a leader in the fields of anesthesiology and teratology, and introduced obstetrical considerations to the established field of neonatology.
- Age: Dec. at 65 (1909-1974)
- Birthplace: Westfield, New Jersey
- Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1962 and has since published 58 novels, as well as a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal and the Jerusalem Prize (2019). Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000) and short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Oates has taught at Princeton University since 1978 and is currently the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing.
- Age: 86
- Birthplace: Lockport, New York
- Robert Louis Peters (October 20, 1924 – June 13, 2014) was an American poet, critic, scholar, playwright, editor, and actor born in an impoverished rural area of northern Wisconsin in 1924. He held a Ph.D in Victorian literature. His poetry career began in 1967 when his young son Richard died unexpectedly of spinal meningitis. The book commemorating this loss, Songs for a Son, was selected by poet Denise Levertov to be published by W. W. Norton in 1967, and it still remains in print. Songs for a Son began a flood of poetry.
- Age: Dec. at 89 (1924-2014)
- Birthplace: Eagle River, Wisconsin
- Lynne Ann Cheney (; née Vincent; born August 14, 1941) is an American author, scholar, and former talk-show host. She is the wife of the 46th vice president of the United States, Dick Cheney, and served as the second lady of the United States from 2001 to 2009.
- Age: 83
- Birthplace: Casper, Wyoming, USA
- A genuine hero in the annals of the American space program, James Lovell served as pilot for NASA's Gemini 7 mission and commander of Gemini 12 before facing his greatest challenge as commander of Apollo 13, which he returned safely to Earth after a system failure which nearly claimed the lives of all aboard the craft. Lovell's heroics on the Apollo 13 mission, which later served as the basis for Ron Howard's Oscar-winning 1994 film of the same name, helped to preserve Lovell's status as one of the greatest figures in the history of the space program, of which he had been a key part since 1962. Over the course of his decade-long career as an astronaut, Lovell logged a record-breaking number of hours in space while participating in some of the most historic events in manned space flight. But it was his command of Apollo 13, and his actions that defied the odds to return the craft and crew safely to Earth, that truly minted James Lovell as one of America's bravest exploration heroes.
- Age: 96
- Birthplace: Cleveland, Ohio, USA
- A multi-award-winning writer and producer for some of television's most acclaimed comedies, Steven Levitan emerged from the writer's rooms of "The Wonder Years" (ABC, 1988-1993), "Wings" (NBC, 1990-97) and "The Larry Sanders Show" (HBO, 1992-98) to become one of television's more acclaimed show creators. Levitan quickly graduated to a producer role and was instrumental to the success of the "Cheers" spin-off, "Frasier" (NBC, 1993-2004), which earned him an Emmy Award and distinguished him as one of the rising stars of small screen comedy. From there he formed his own production company, Steve Levitan Productions, and created shows as wildly divergent as "Just Shoot Me" (NBC, 1996-2003), "Stark Raving Mad" (NBC, 1999-2000), "Greg the Bunny" (Fox, 2001-02) and "Stacked" (Fox, 2004-06) starring Pamela Anderson. Levitan found even greater success in partnership with Chris Lloyd with whom he created the short-lived "Back to You" (Fox, 2007-08) and the multi-Emmy Award winning critical darling, "Modern Family" (ABC, 2009- ). By deftly blending hilarity with heart, Levitan's brand of comedy was rooted in the joys and absurdities of everyday life, with a particular focus on offbeat variants on the nuclear family. His work was richly rewarded with awards and critical acclaim, as well as by TV viewers, as several of his shows were seen as modern classics and Levitan himself was considered one of the medium's most successful producers.
- Age: 62
- Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois, USA
- Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer, and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures, 532 of which were completed. Wright believed in designing structures that were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was best exemplified by Fallingwater, which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture". Wright was a leader of the Prairie School movement of architecture and developed the concept of the Usonian home, his unique vision for urban planning in the United States.
- Age: Dec. at 91 (1867-1959)
- Birthplace: Richland Center, Wisconsin
- Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; 10 June 1915 – 5 April 2005) was a Canadian-American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction three times and he received the National Book Foundation's lifetime Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1990.In the words of the Swedish Nobel Committee, his writing exhibited "the mixture of rich picaresque novel and subtle analysis of our culture, of entertaining adventure, drastic and tragic episodes in quick succession interspersed with philosophic conversation, all developed by a commentator with a witty tongue and penetrating insight into the outer and inner complications that drive us to act, or prevent us from acting, and that can be called the dilemma of our age." His best-known works include The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King, Herzog, Mr. Sammler's Planet, Seize the Day, Humboldt's Gift and Ravelstein. Bellow was widely regarded as one of the 20th century's greatest authors.Bellow said that of all his characters, Eugene Henderson, of Henderson the Rain King, was the one most like himself. Bellow grew up as an immigrant from Quebec. As Christopher Hitchens describes it, Bellow's fiction and principal characters reflect his own yearning for transcendence, a battle "to overcome not just ghetto conditions but also ghetto psychoses." Bellow's protagonists, in one shape or another, all wrestle with what Albert Corde, the dean in The Dean's December, called "the big-scale insanities of the 20th century." This transcendence of the "unutterably dismal" (a phrase from Dangling Man) is achieved, if it can be achieved at all, through a "ferocious assimilation of learning" (Hitchens) and an emphasis on nobility.
- Age: Dec. at 89 (1915-2005)
- Birthplace: Lachine, Québec, Canada
- Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930 – January 12, 1965) was an African-American playwright and writer.Hansberry was the first black female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of Black Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant and eventually provoking the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. The title of the play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" At the young age of 29, she won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award — making her the first African American dramatist, the fifth woman, and the youngest playwright to do so.After she moved to New York City, Hansberry worked at the Pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom, where she dealt with intellectuals such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois. Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggle for liberation and their impact on the world. She died of cancer at the age of 34. Hansberry inspired the song by Nina Simone entitled "To Be Young, Gifted and Black".
- Age: Dec. at 34 (1930-1965)
- Birthplace: USA, Chicago, Illinois
- Edward Witten (born August 26, 1951) is an American theoretical physicist and professor of mathematical physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Witten is a researcher in string theory, quantum gravity, supersymmetric quantum field theories, and other areas of mathematical physics. In addition to his contributions to physics, Witten's work has significantly impacted pure mathematics. In 1990, he became the first physicist to be awarded a Fields Medal by the International Mathematical Union, awarded for his 1981 proof of the positive energy theorem in general relativity.
- Age: 73
- Birthplace: Baltimore, Maryland
- Laurel Blair Salton Clark (March 10, 1961 – February 1, 2003) was an American medical doctor, United States Navy Captain, NASA astronaut and Space Shuttle mission specialist. Clark died along with her six fellow crew members in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. She was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
- Age: Dec. at 41 (1961-2003)
- Birthplace: Ames, Iowa
- With his good looks and trademark pencil thin moustache, Don Ameche specialized in musicals and comedies during the 1930s and 1940s, often cast as likeable, upper-class sophisticates. He earned his first notoriety on radio, which led to a contract with 20th Century Fox and such popular features as "In Old Chicago" (1937) and "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (1938). He achieved his pinnacle of fame with the titular part in the biography "The Story of Alexander Graham Bell" (1939), though "Midnight" (1939) and "Heaven Can Wait" (1943) were arguably his finest showcases as a comedic leading man. Ameche's film opportunities dried up in the late 1940s, but he still managed to keep busy with a variety of television and stage assignments, and briefly reignited his career in the following decade via some Broadway successes. However, it was not until his turn as an evil billionaire in the hit comedy "Trading Places" (1983) that the now elderly actor found himself truly in demand once again. Recognition from his peers finally came via his role in Ron Howard's fantasy hit "Cocoon" (1985) for which he received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Over a career spanning more than six decades, Ameche managed to make his mark in three different mediums and weathered significant career lulls with veracity and hard work, offering three of his most indelible performances well into his golden years.
- Age: Dec. at 85 (1908-1993)
- Birthplace: Kenosha, Wisconsin, USA
- Tammy Suzanne Green Baldwin (born February 11, 1962) is an American politician serving as the junior United States Senator from Wisconsin since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, she served three terms in the Wisconsin State Assembly, representing the 78th district, and from 1999 to 2013 represented Wisconsin's 2nd congressional district in the United States House of Representatives. As a gay woman, Baldwin has made history several times through her electoral successes. In 1998 she became the first openly gay woman and first openly LGBT non-incumbent elected to the United States Congress, as well as the first woman elected to represent Wisconsin in Congress. In 2012 Baldwin became the first openly gay person and first openly LGBT person elected to the United States Senate.Baldwin defeated her Republican opponent, former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, in the 2012 United States Senate election in Wisconsin. She was reelected in 2018 by a landslide, defeating Republican nominee Leah Vukmir. Her reelection made her the first openly LGBT person to win a second term in the Senate.
- Age: 63
- Birthplace: Madison, Wisconsin, USA
- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (August 8, 1896 – December 14, 1953) was an American author who lived in rural Florida and wrote novels with rural themes and settings. Her best known work, The Yearling, about a boy who adopts an orphaned fawn, won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1939 and was later made into a movie of the same name. The book was written long before the concept of young adult fiction, but is now commonly included in teen-reading lists.
- Age: Dec. at 57 (1896-1953)
- Birthplace: Washington, D.C.
- Mary Woodard Lasker (November 30, 1900 – February 21, 1994) was an American health activist and philanthropist. She worked to raise funds for medical research, and founded the Lasker Foundation.
- Age: Dec. at 93 (1900-1994)
- Birthplace: Watertown, Wisconsin
Mark Pocan
Businessperson, PoliticianMark William Pocan (; born August 14, 1964) is an American politician and businessman serving as the U.S. Representative for Wisconsin's 2nd congressional district since 2013. The district is based in the state capital, Madison. A member of the Democratic Party, Pocan serves as Co-Chair of both the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus. From 1999 to 2013 he served as a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly, representing the 78th district, succeeding Tammy Baldwin there, whom he also replaced in Congress when Baldwin was elected to the Senate.- Age: 60
- Birthplace: Kenosha, Wisconsin, USA
- An amiable, gray-haired actor with a nasal twang, Mason Adams is perhaps best known for his Emmy-nominated role as managing editor Charlie Hume on the long-running TV series "Lou Grant" (CBS, 1977-82). He began his career on radio in the 1940s, starring as the title character on the popular "Pepper Young's Family" from 1945-59. Adams has made the occasional film appearance, including "F/X" (1986) and more recently as a priest in Paul Schrader's "Touch" (1997). Also a prolific voice-over artist, he has helped sell a wide range of products, most notably Smucker's jams and jellies.
- Age: Dec. at 86 (1919-2005)
- Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York, USA
- Gloria Jean Watkins (September 25, 1952 – December 15, 2021), better known by her pen name bell hooks, was an American author, professor, feminist, and social activist. The name "bell hooks" is borrowed from her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks. The focus of hooks's writing was the intersectionality of race, capitalism, and gender, and what she described as their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and class domination. She published more than 30 books and numerous scholarly articles, appeared in documentary films, and participated in public lectures. She addressed race, class, gender, art, history, sexuality, mass media, and feminism. In 2014, she founded the bell hooks Institute at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky.
- Age: 72
- Birthplace: USA, Hopkinsville, Kentucky
- Alan Graham MacDiarmid, ONZ FRS (14 April 1927 – 7 February 2007) was a New Zealand-born American chemist, and one of three recipients of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2000.
- Age: Dec. at 79 (1927-2007)
- Birthplace: Masterton, New Zealand
- Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (born 29 October 1938) is a Liberian politician who served as the 24th President of Liberia from 2006 to 2018. Sirleaf was the first elected female head of state in Africa. Ellen Eugenia Johnson was born in Monrovia to a Gola father and Kru-German mother. She was educated at the College of West Africa. She completed her education in the United States, where she studied at Madison Business College and Harvard University. She returned to Liberia to work in William Tolbert's government as Deputy Minister of Finance from 1971 to 1974. Later she worked again in the West, for the World Bank in the Caribbean and Latin America. Sirleaf returned to Liberia, where she was appointed to the late President Tolbert's government as deputy minister of Finance. In 1979 she received a cabinet appointment as Minister of Finance, serving to 1980. After Samuel Doe seized power that year in a coup d'état and executed Tolbert, Sirleaf fled to the United States. She worked for Citibank and then the Equator Bank. She returned to Liberia to contest a senatorial seat for Montserrado County in 1985, an election that was disputed. Sirleaf continued to be involved in politics. She finished in second place at the 1997 presidential election, which was won by Charles Taylor. She won the 2005 presidential election and took office on 16 January 2006. She was re-elected in 2011. She was the first woman in Africa elected as president of her country. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, in recognition of her efforts to bring women into the peacekeeping process. She has received numerous other awards for her leadership. In June 2016, Sirleaf was elected as the Chair of the Economic Community of West African States, making her the first woman to hold the position since it was created.
- Age: 86
- Birthplace: Monrovia, Liberia
- Joan Wallach Scott (born December 18, 1941) is an American historian of France with contributions in gender history. She is a Professor Emerita in the School of Social Science in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Scott is known for her work in feminist history and gender theory, engaging post-structural theory on these topics. Geographically, her work focuses primarily on France, and thematically she deals with how power works, the relation between language and experience, and the role and practice of historians. Her work grapples with theory’s application to historical and current events, focusing on how terms are defined and how positions and identities are articulated.Among her publications was the article "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis", published in 1986 in the American Historical Review. This article, "undoubtedly one of the most widely read and cited articles in the journal's history", was foundational in the formation of a field of gender history within the Anglo-American historical profession.
- Age: 83
- Birthplace: New York City, New York
- David John Lesar (born May 30, 1953) is an American businessman who is the former Chairman of Halliburton Energy Services. He was the CEO of Halliburton for 17 years from 2000 to 2017. Trained as a Certified Public Accountant, Lesar spent 16 years at Arthur Andersen. He had spent most of his career at Andersen, where he worked on their Halliburton account. In 1995, Lesar was hired by Halliburton as a new vice president. July 24, 2019 David Lesar was named the interim CEO of HCSC.
- Age: 71
- Birthplace: Madison, Wisconsin
- When actor Gena Rowlands arrived in Hollywood in the 1950s, she could easily have opted to take the Hollywood starlet route. But she shared a creative vision with filmmaker and husband John Cassavetes; preferring instead to use her stunning, camera-loving facial features and natural acting style in unglamorous roles in groundbreaking independent films that launched an entire movement. Devoted to the idea of unearthing complex human emotions rather than painting characters with a one-dimensional Hollywood brush, Rowlands was a key factor in Cassavetes' low budget, documentary-style dramas "Faces" (1968), "A Woman Under the Influence" (1974) and "Opening Night" (1977). Whether playing a suburban housewife or a successful entertainer, Rowlands took risks with unconventional characters who dared to look inwards and question the unfulfilled promises of the status quo. From her acclaimed, Oscar-nominated roles on the 1970s art house circuit, Rowlands spent her later career lending authenticity to more mainstream fare, with Golden Globe and Emmy-winning roles as eccentric mothers and middle-aged women in crisis in television movies and theatrical releases.
- Age: Dec. at 94 (1930-2024)
- Birthplace: Madison, Wisconsin, USA
- Greta Conway Van Susteren (born June 11, 1954) is an American commentator, lawyer, and former television news anchor for CNN, Fox News, and NBC News. She hosted Fox News's On the Record w/ Greta Van Susteren for 14 years (2002–2016) before departing for MSNBC, where she hosted For the Record with Greta for roughly six months in 2017. A former criminal defense and civil trial lawyer, she appeared as a legal analyst on CNN co-hosting Burden of Proof with Roger Cossack from 1994 to 2002, playing defense attorney to Cossack's prosecutor. In 2016, she was listed as the 94th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes, up from 99th in 2015.
- Age: 70
- Birthplace: USA, Grand Chute, Wisconsin, Appleton
- John King Fairbank (May 24, 1907 – September 14, 1991), was a prominent American historian of China. Considered the doyen of post-war China studies, the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University is named after him. Among his most widely read books are The United States and China, which was first published in 1948 and went through revisions in 1958, 1979, and 1983, and his co-edited series, The Cambridge History of China.
- Age: Dec. at 84 (1907-1991)
- Birthplace: Huron, South Dakota
- Michael Jay Krasny (born September 22, 1944) is an American radio host and professor who is currently the host of Forum, a news and public affairs program on San Francisco public radio station KQED-FM covering current events, politics, and culture. Krasny has served as the host of Forum since 1993. Additionally, Krasny is currently a professor of English literature at San Francisco State University.
- Age: 81
- Birthplace: Cleveland, Ohio
- John Rogers Searle (; born 31 July 1932) is an American philosopher. He was Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Language and Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. Widely noted for his contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy, he began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1959. As an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Searle was secretary of "Students against Joseph McCarthy". He received all his university degrees, BA, MA, and DPhil, from the University of Oxford, where he held his first faculty positions. Later, at UC Berkeley, he became the first tenured professor to join the 1964–1965 Free Speech Movement. In the late 1980s, Searle challenged the restrictions of Berkeley's 1980 rent stabilization ordinance. Following what came to be known as the California Supreme Court's "Searle Decision" of 1990, Berkeley changed its rent control policy, leading to large rent increases between 1991 and 1994. In 2000 Searle received the Jean Nicod Prize; in 2004, the National Humanities Medal; and in 2006, the Mind & Brain Prize. Searle's early work on speech acts, influenced by J. L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein, helped establish his reputation. His notable concepts include the "Chinese room" argument against "strong" artificial intelligence. In June 2019 Searle was stripped of his emeritus status at the University of California, Berkeley, having violated the university’s sexual harassment policies.
- Age: 92
- Birthplace: USA, Denver, Colorado
- William Kazmaier (born December 30, 1953) is an American former world champion powerlifter, world champion strongman and professional wrestler. During the 1970s and 1980s, he set numerous powerlifting and strongman world records, and won two International Powerlifting Federation (IPF) World Championships and three World's Strongest Man titles. In the 1980s, Kazmaier became famous for his claim to be "the strongest man who ever lived" by equaling and surpassing spectacular and versatile feats of strength of famous strongmen of the 20th century. He is widely considered to be one of the all-time greatest competitors in strength competitions.
- Age: 71
- Birthplace: USA, Wisconsin, Burlington
- William Royce "Boz" Scaggs (born June 8, 1944) is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He is known for his albums of the late 1970s as well as the songs "Lido Shuffle" and the Grammy Award-winning "Lowdown" from the critically acclaimed album Silk Degrees (1976), which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. Scaggs continues to write, record music, and tour.
- Age: 80
- Birthplace: USA, Ohio, Canton
- Ammon Ashford Hennacy (July 24, 1893 – January 14, 1970) was an American Christian pacifist, anarchist, social activist, member of the Catholic Worker Movement, and Wobbly. He established the Joe Hill House of Hospitality in Salt Lake City, Utah and practiced tax resistance.
- Age: Dec. at 76 (1893-1970)
- Birthplace: Negley, Ohio
- Bryan David "Butch" Vig (born August 2, 1955), nicknamed the Nevermind Man, is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer, best known as the drummer and co-producer of the alternative rock band Garbage and the producer of diamond-selling album Nevermind by Nirvana.A native of Wisconsin, Vig had been based in Madison for much of his career, from studying at the University of Wisconsin, to performing in local bands Spooner and Fire Town, and then to setting up his own recording studio, Smart Studios, with bandmate Steve Marker in the town. After becoming well known as a producer, he formed and played drums with Garbage, who sold 17 million records over a ten-year period. Vig returned to producing full-time once Garbage went on hiatus in 2005. The band reconvened in 2010 to record material for their fifth album. In 2012, Vig ranked number nine in NME's Top 50 Greatest Producers Ever.
- Age: 69
- Birthplace: USA, Wisconsin, Viroqua
Ed Thompson
Allan Edward "Ed" Thompson (December 25, 1944 – October 22, 2011) was an American businessman and politician. He served as Mayor of Tomah, Wisconsin for two non-consecutive terms, and was the Libertarian candidate for Governor of Wisconsin in 2002, receiving nearly 11% of the vote in that race.- Age: Dec. at 66 (1944-2011)
- Birthplace: Elroy, Wisconsin, USA
William Bast
Television producer, Film Producer, ScreenwriterWilliam Bast (April 3, 1931 – May 4, 2015) was an American screenwriter and author. In addition to writing scripts for motion pictures and television, he was the author of two biographies of the screen actor James Dean. He often worked with his lover Paul Huson.- Age: 93
- Birthplace: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
- Michael George Aschbacher (born April 8, 1944) is an American mathematician best known for his work on finite groups. He was a leading figure in the completion of the classification of finite simple groups in the 1970s and 1980s. It later turned out that the classification was incomplete, because the case of quasithin groups had not been finished. This gap was fixed by Aschbacher and Stephen D. Smith in 2004, in a pair of books comprising about 1300 pages. Aschbacher is currently the Shaler Arthur Hanisch Professor of Mathematics at the California Institute of Technology.
- Age: 80
- Birthplace: Little Rock, Arkansas
- Jayaprakash Narayan (listen ; 11 October 1902 – 8 October 1979), popularly referred to as JP or Lok Nayak (Hindi for The People's Leader), was an Indian independence activist, theorist, socialist and political leader. He is also known as the "Hero of Quit India Movement" and he is remembered for leading the mid-1970s opposition against Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, for whose overthrow he had called for a "total revolution". His biography, Jayaprakash, was written by his nationalist friend and an eminent writer of Hindi literature, Rambriksh Benipuri. In 1999, he was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, in recognition of his social work. Other awards include the Magsaysay award for Public Service in 1965.
- Age: Dec. at 76 (1902-1979)
- Birthplace: Saran district, India
- Martin Walt is a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University, U.S.. He specializes in magnetospheric physics. He is also the father of Stephen Walt, a professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
- Annie Laurie Gaylor (born November 2, 1955) is an American atheist, secular and women's rights activist and a co-founder of – and, with her husband Dan Barker, a current co-president of – the Freedom From Religion Foundation. She was also the editor of the organization's newspaper, Freethought Today (published ten times per year) until 2015. Gaylor is the author of several books, including Woe to the Women: The Bible Tells Me So, Betrayal of Trust: Clergy Abuse of Children and, as editor, Women Without Superstition: No Gods – No Masters.
- Age: 69
- Birthplace: Tomah, Wisconsin
- Edwin Harold Newman (January 25, 1919 – August 13, 2010) was an American newscaster, journalist, and author. After beginning his career with the wire services and serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Newman worked in radio for CBS News. He is known for a 23-year career in television news with the National Broadcasting Company, from 1961 to 1984.
- Age: Dec. at 91 (1919-2010)
- Birthplace: New York City, USA, New York
- Thomas James Walsh (June 12, 1859 – March 2, 1933) was an American lawyer and Democratic Party politician from Helena, Montana who represented Montana in the US Senate from 1913 to 1933. For his first two terms, he was elected by the state legislature, as was the custom of the time, and in 1924 and after he was elected by popular vote, which was established by constitutional amendment. Walsh had a national reputation as a liberal but died before he could serve President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, who chose him as Attorney General.
- Age: Dec. at 73 (1859-1933)
- Birthplace: Two Rivers, Wisconsin, USA
Steve Gunderson
PoliticianSteven Craig Gunderson (born May 10, 1951) is the former President and CEO of the Council on Foundations, the current president and CEO of the Career Education Colleges and Universities, and a former Republican congressman from Wisconsin.- Age: 73
- Birthplace: Eau Claire, Wisconsin, USA
William Edwards Huntington
William Edwards Huntington (July 30, 1844 – December 6, 1930) was an American university dean and president.- Age: Dec. at 86 (1844-1930)
- Birthplace: Hillsboro, Illinois
- Eudora Alice Welty (April 13, 1909 – July 23, 2001) was an American short story writer and novelist who wrote about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Order of the South. She was the first living author to have her works published by the Library of America. Her house in Jackson, Mississippi, has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and is open to the public as a house museum.
- Age: Dec. at 92 (1909-2001)
- Birthplace: Jackson, Mississippi, USA
- Jane Kaczmarek had already had a long and fruitful acting career comprised of roles on stage and screen, but it was her role as harried mother Lois on the hit sitcom "Malcolm in the Middle" (Fox, 2000-06) that finally placed her firmly in the spotlight. The wife of fellow actor Bradley Whitford of "West Wing" fame since 1993, this attractive and versatile brunette routinely turned in noteworthy performances. Kaczmarek had about her an air of determined self-possession that she molded around her characters, regardless of whether she was playing rich, snooty socialites or underprivileged scrappers. One obvious result of Kaczmarek's extreme dedication was her exceptionally realistic portrayals of older women who were either accomplished or embittered with their lives.
- Age: 69
- Birthplace: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
- Along with his directing partners Jim Abraham and brother David Zucker, Jerry Zucker all but revolutionized comedy in the 1980s, starting with arguably the most famous cinematic parody, "Airplane!" (1980). Prior to that surprising commercial success, Zuckers and Abraham wrote the cult classic, "Kentucky Fried Move" (1977), an uproarious comedy of unconnected sketches that skewered kung-fu movies, exploitation films and public service announcements. After "Airplane," Zuckers and Abraham made a failed attempt at television with "Police Squad!" (ABC, 1982), before bouncing back on the big screen with "Top Secret!" (1984). With the trio going their separate ways, Zucker began making more mainstream movies, directing "Ruthless People" (1986) and the surprisingly romantic drama, "Ghost" (1990), starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore. He also turned "Police Squad!" into the successful film franchise, "The Naked Gun - From the Files of Police Squad!" (1988) before helming "First Knight" (1995) and "Rat Race" (2001). In between, Zucker produced "A Walk in the Clouds" (1995) and "My Best Friend's Wedding" (1997). Though he shied away from directing later in his career, and in fact took a large step back in general, Zucker remained an instantly recognizable name as one of the most influential figures in the history of comedy.
- Age: 74
- Birthplace: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
- Charles Spittal Robb (born June 26, 1939) is an American politician and former officer in the United States Marine Corps. He served as the 64th Governor of Virginia from 1982 to 1986, and as a United States senator from 1989 until 2001. In 2004, he co-chaired the Iraq Intelligence Commission.
- Age: 85
- Birthplace: Phoenix, Arizona, USA
- Distinguished stage actor and one of Hollywood's most celebrated, versatile stars of the 1930s and 40s. March's roles ranged from light comedy ("The Royal Family of Broadway" 1930) to horror ("Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" 1932) to melodrama ("The Best Years of Our Lives" 1946). His classically trained voice and engaging good looks highlighted a number of period pieces, such as "Anna Karenina" (1935), but he seemed more at home playing contemporary characters like the fading actor in "A Star Is Born" (1937) and the exploitative reporter in the biting comedy "Nothing Sacred" (1937). March was married to actress Florence Eldridge (who died in 1988), opposite whom he appeared on stage and screen, from 1927 until his death.
- Age: Dec. at 77 (1897-1975)
- Birthplace: Racine, Wisconsin, USA
Anatole Boris Volkov
Anatole Boris Volkov (October 29, 1924 – November 28, 2000) was an American physicist, allegedly serving as a courier for the Silvermaster spy ring between Washington, D.C. and New York City. Volkov taught both abroad and in America, retiring in the United States 1989. Though Volkov's name appears in the FBI's files, he was never convicted of any espionage by the U.S. government.- Age: Dec. at 76 (1924-2000)
- Birthplace: California
Philip La Follette
LawyerPhilip Fox La Follette (May 8, 1897 – August 18, 1965) was an American politician. He was the 27th and 29th Governor of Wisconsin and one of the founders of the Wisconsin Progressive Party.- Age: Dec. at 68 (1897-1965)
- Birthplace: Madison, Wisconsin, USA
- A celebrated Broadway actress who is also noted as perhaps one of the most respected acting teachers in the USA, Uta Hagen has been an outspoken critic of both the Stanislavsky Method as practiced (but not of the Russian master himself) and of formalism in acting. Born in Germany, but raised from childhood in Madison, WI, Hagen made her professional acting debut in 1937 playing Ophelia opposite Eva Le Gallienne in the latter's ground-breaking New York production of "Hamlet." That same year, she made her Broadway debut as Nina in a Broadway production of Chekhov's "The Seagull" starring Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne, both of whom would have a profound influence on her acting style. She went on to star opposite her then-husband Jose Ferrer and Paul Muni in "Key Largo" (1939-40) and was the subject of controversy playing Desdemona to Paul Robeson's "Othello" (with Ferrer as Iago). When the show toured, some less liberal audience members were not accepting of a black actor and white actress having physical contact on stage. Hagen was actually contemplating abandoning the craft until she was cast by Harold Clurman in "The Whole World Over" in 1947. Clurman, one of the founders of The Group Theatre, introduced Hagen to Stanislavsky and what she would term "truthfulness on stage" as well as to Herbert Berghof, who asked her first to join his HB Studios as an acting teacher and then, several years later, to be his wife.
- Age: Dec. at 84 (1919-2004)
- Birthplace: Göttingen, Germany
- Colleen Goggins is a member of the Johnson Johnson Executive Committee and serves as worldwide chairman, Consumer Personal Care Group. She was named to this position in June, 2001.
- Timothy W. Carpenter is a Democratic member of the Wisconsin Senate, representing the 3rd District since 2003. He earlier served in the Wisconsin State Assembly, representing the 20th District from 1985 through 2003.
- Age: 64
- Birthplace: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Khem Shahani
Khem Shahani (1923–2001) was an Indian microbiologist who conducted pioneer research on probiotics (live microorganisms).- Age: Dec. at 78 (1923-2001)
- Birthplace: India
Alan Shusterman
John W. Rowe
John W. Rowe has been Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Exelon Corporation April 2002 and has been its President since July 2004. Mr. Rowe has been Chairman of Exelon Generation Co. LLC., since April 23, 2003 and serves as its Chief Executive Officer and has been its President since September 24, 2007.Nathan Rosenberg
Professor, EconomistNathan Rosenberg (November 22, 1927 – August 24, 2015) was an American economist specializing in the history of technology. He earned his PhD from the University of Wisconsin in 1955, and taught at Indiana University (1955–1957), the University of Pennsylvania (1957–1961), Purdue University (1961–1964), Harvard University (1967–1969), the University of Wisconsin (1969–1974) and Stanford University (1974–), where he was the Fairleigh S. Dickinson, Jr. Professor Emeritus of Public Policy in the Department of Economics. In 1989 he was visiting Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at the University of Cambridge.Rosenberg's contribution to understanding technological change was acknowledged by Douglass C. North in his Nobel Prize lecture entitled "Economic Performance through Time". In 1996 he was awarded the Leonardo da Vinci Medal, the highest award of the Society for the History of Technology. In 1986's How the West Grew Rich, Rosenberg and co-author L.E. Birdzell, Jr. argued that Western Europe's economic success grew out of a loosening of political and religious controls, and that Western medieval life was not actually organized in castles, cathedrals, and cities; but that it was organized more in the rural areas in huts and in places with reliable access to food. This is why, the book states, most of the population was to some extent involved in agriculture and its related occupations of transporting produce from place to place. The importance of these ideas have since been more fully recognized by the discipline of international economic history. The Rosenberg-Birdzell hypothesis is that innovation is produced by economic competition among politically independent entities. This hypothesis is tested and supported by Joel Mokyr in his contribution to the Festschrift-issue of Research Policy, which was published in honor of Nathan Rosenberg in 1994.- Age: 97
- Dale Chihuly (born September 20, 1941) is an American glass sculptor and entrepreneur. His works are considered to possess outstanding artistic merit in the field of blown glass, "moving it into the realm of large-scale sculpture." The technical difficulties of working with glass forms are considerable, yet Chihuly uses it as the primary medium for installations and environmental artwork.
- Age: 83
- Birthplace: USA, Tacoma, Washington
- James Edward Doyle Jr. (born November 23, 1945) is an American lawyer, politician, and member of the Democratic Party who served as the 44th Governor of Wisconsin, serving from January 6, 2003 to January 3, 2011. In his first election to the governorship, he defeated incumbent Governor Scott McCallum by a margin of 45 percent to 41 percent; the Libertarian Party candidate Ed Thompson carried 10 percent of the vote. Although in 2002 Democrats increased their number of governorships, Doyle was the only one of them to unseat a sitting Republican governor. Doyle also served as Wisconsin’s Attorney General for 12 years before becoming Governor. He is currently an attorney 'of counsel' in the Madison, Wisconsin office of the law firm of Foley & Lardner and serves on the corporate board of Epic Systems.
- Age: 79
- Birthplace: Washington, D.C., USA
- Eric Arthur Heiden (born June 14, 1958) is an American physician and a former long track speed skater, road cyclist and track cyclist. He won an unprecedented five individual gold medals, and set four Olympic records and one world record at the 1980 Winter Olympic Games. Heiden was the most successful athlete at those Olympic Games, single-handedly winning more gold medals than all nations except for the Soviet Union (10) and East Germany (9). He is the most successful Winter Olympian from a single edition of any Winter Olympics. He delivered the Athlete's Oath at those same 1980 Games. His coach was Dianne Holum.Heiden is an icon in the speed skating community. His victories are significant, as few speed skaters (and athletes in general) have won competitions in both sprint and long-distance events. Heiden is the only athlete in the history of speed skating to have won all five events in a single Olympic tournament and the only one to have won a gold medal in all events. He is considered by some to be the best overall speed skater (short and long distances) in the sport's history. Heiden ranked No. 46 in ESPN's SportsCentury 50 Greatest Athletes of the 20th Century in 1999, the only speed skater to make the list. In 2000, a Dutch newspaper called him the greatest skater ever.
- Age: 66
- Birthplace: Madison, Wisconsin
- Thomas Ethelbert Skilling, III (born February 20, 1952), known on-air as Tom Skilling, is an American television meteorologist. Since 1978, he has worked as a meterologist at WGN-TV in Chicago.
- Age: 72
- Birthplace: USA, Aurora, Illinois
- Sarah Manski is an American journalist. Manski attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she was a leader in campus labor activism and prominent member of the Student and Labor Action Coalition. She is currently CEO of PosiPair, which is creating an on-line source of green business information.
- Age: 46
- Birthplace: Beloit, Wisconsin
- Clyde Kluckhohn (; January 11, 1905, Le Mars, Iowa – July 28, 1960, near Santa Fe, New Mexico), was an American anthropologist and social theorist, best known for his long-term ethnographic work among the Navajo and his contributions to the development of theory of culture within American anthropology.
- Age: Dec. at 55 (1905-1960)
- Birthplace: Le Mars, Iowa
- Albert Lester Lehninger (February 17, 1917 – March 4, 1986) was an American biochemist in the field of bioenergetics. He made fundamental contributions to the current understanding of metabolism at a molecular level. In 1948, he discovered, with Eugene P. Kennedy, that mitochondria are the site of oxidative phosphorylation in eukaryotes, which ushered in the modern study of energy transduction. He is the author of a number of classic texts, including: Biochemistry, The Mitochondrion, Bioenergetics and, most notably, his series Principles of Biochemistry. The latter is a widely used text for introductory biochemistry courses at the college and university levels.
- Age: Dec. at 69 (1917-1986)
- Birthplace: Bridgeport, Connecticut
- With his younger brother Jerry and childhood pal Jim Abrahams, writer-producer-director David Zucker was responsible for a series of hilarious spoofs of a wide swath of popular movie genres. After forming a comedy troupe in college, the trio made their film debut with the cult classic, "The Kentucky Fried Movie" (1977), which featured a string of vignettes. But it was their next spoof, "Airplane!" (1980), that marked their first major hit and established the three as an influential comedic force. After "Airplane," the Zuckers and Abraham made an attempt at television with "Police Squad!" (ABC, 1982) before returning to the big screen with "Top Secret!" (1984). With the trio going their separate ways, Zucker began making more mainstream movies, directing "Ruthless People" (1986) and the successful film franchise, "The Naked Gun - From the Files of Police Squad!" (1988), which revitalized the Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) character from "Police Squad" and spawned two hit sequels. From there, Zucker directed "BASEketball" (1998) and flew solo to direct the romantic comedy "My Boss' Daughter" (2003). On his own, Zucker breathed new life into the "Scary Movie" franchise, directing the third and fourth installments. Zucker remained, along with his two cohorts, a true pioneer of the spoof comedy.
- Age: 77
- Birthplace: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
- Age: 68
- Birthplace: Berlin, Wisconsin
- James Edwin (Ed) Hawley (September 27, 1897 – April 20, 1965) was a Canadian geologist and distinguished Professor of Mineralogy at Queen's University. Hawley was raised in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. He earned both a Bachelor’s and a Master's degree from Queen’s University in 1918 and 1920, respectively. After completing his Masters, Hawley spent three years working in petroleum geology in Alberta, Ecuador, Burma and India. In 1926, he earned his PhD at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He stayed there for three years as an Assistant Professor. In 1929, Hawley returned to Queen's as Professor and Head of the Department of Mineralogy. His earliest papers in 1929 and 1930, based on research on the generation of oil in rocks by shearing pressures, are classics in the field of petroleum geology. In 1948, he established the school's Spectrographic lab. He held that position until the Mineralogy and Geology Department were combined in 1950. At that time he was made Head of the newly created, Geological Sciences Department. He held that position until 1962. Students familiar with Mohs’ Hardness Scale referred to him as "Number 11" because the mineral, Hawleyite, was named after him. He was a pioneer in the field of interpretative mineralogy; much of his research was devoted to genetic associations of ore deposits and to investigation of conditions under which metallic minerals may be transported and deposited. Through both by field investigations and by laboratory researches, Hawley made notable contributions to the mineralogy of such deposits as the nickel-copper ores of Sudbury, the iron ores of the Michipicoten district and Steep Rock Lake, the gold ores of Kirkland Lake and northern Quebec, the complex ores of the Eastern Townships, Precambrian stratigraphy, and Evidences of life in the Archaean. The Royal Society of Canada said this about Hawley’s scientific work, "Dr. Hawley has brought to geology an incisive, scientific mind and an exceptional knowledge of the basic sciences of chemistry and physics. His work is notable for acute observation in the field and for interpretation of field phenomena on the basis of the fundamental laws of science. As a result, his contributions contain fresh and original ideas, many of which have opened up new channels of geological investigation. On the other hand, he has shown the fallacies of a number of geological hypotheses which cannot be substantiated by established laws of chemistry and physics." Dr. Hawley was a member of the National Advisory Committee on Research in the Geological Sciences. Hawley retired in 1963 and died two years later. Dr. James Edwin Hawley's Memorial. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/97667568/james-edwin-hawley
- Age: Dec. at 67 (1897-1965)
- Birthplace: Kingston, Canada
- Wayne Lyman Morse (October 20, 1900 – July 22, 1974) was an American attorney and United States Senator from Oregon, known for his proclivity for opposing his party's leadership, and specifically for his opposition to the Vietnam War on constitutional grounds.Born in Madison, Wisconsin, and educated at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Minnesota Law School, Morse moved to Oregon in 1930 and began teaching at the University of Oregon School of Law. During World War II, he was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Republican; he became an Independent after Dwight D. Eisenhower's election to the presidency in 1952. While an independent, he set a record for performing the second longest one-person filibuster in the history of the Senate. Morse joined the Democratic Party in 1955, and was reelected twice while a member of that party. Morse made a brief run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 1960. In 1964, Morse was one of two senators to oppose the later-to-become-controversial Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. It authorized the president to take military action in Vietnam without a declaration of war. He continued to speak out against the war in the ensuing years, and lost his 1968 bid for reelection to Bob Packwood, who criticized his strong opposition to the war. Morse made two more bids for reelection to the Senate before his death in 1974.
- Age: Dec. at 73 (1900-1974)
- Birthplace: Madison, USA, Wisconsin
- Jack St. Clair Kilby (November 8, 1923 – June 20, 2005) was an American electrical engineer who took part (along with Robert Noyce) in the realization of the first integrated circuit while working at Texas Instruments (TI) in 1958. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on December 10, 2000. To congratulate him, American President Bill Clinton wrote, "You can take pride in the knowledge that your work will help to improve lives for generations to come."Kilby is also the co-inventor of the handheld calculator and the thermal printer, for which he has the patents. He also has patents for seven other inventions.
- Age: Dec. at 81 (1923-2005)
- Birthplace: Jefferson City, Missouri
- Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa (July 18, 1906 – February 27, 1992) was a Canadian-born American academic and politician of Japanese ancestry. A professor of English, he served as president of San Francisco State University, and then as U.S. Senator from California from 1977 to 1983.
- Age: Dec. at 85 (1906-1992)
- Birthplace: Vancouver, Canada
- Carl Ransom Rogers (January 8, 1902 – February 4, 1987) was an American psychologist and among the founders of the humanistic approach (or client-centered approach) to psychology. Rogers is widely considered to be one of the founding fathers of psychotherapy research and was honored for his pioneering research with the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions by the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1956. The person-centered approach, his own unique approach to understanding personality and human relationships, found wide application in various domains such as psychotherapy and counseling (client-centered therapy), education (student-centered learning), organizations, and other group settings. For his professional work he was bestowed the Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Psychology by the APA in 1972. In a study by Steven J. Haggbloom and colleagues using six criteria such as citations and recognition, Rogers was found to be the sixth most eminent psychologist of the 20th century and second, among clinicians, only to Sigmund Freud.
- Age: Dec. at 85 (1902-1987)
- Birthplace: Oak Park, Illinois
- Paul Michael Weyrich (; October 7, 1942 – December 18, 2008) was an American religious conservative political activist and commentator, most notable as a figurehead of the New Right. He co-founded the conservative think tanks The Heritage Foundation, the Free Congress Foundation, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). He coined the term "moral majority," the name of the political action group Moral Majority that he co-founded in 1979 with Jerry Falwell. After Vatican II he transferred from the Latin Church of the Roman Catholic Church to the Melkite Greek Catholic Church and was ordained as a deacon.
- Age: Dec. at 66 (1942-2008)
- Birthplace: Racine, Wisconsin
- Grayson Louis Kirk (October 12, 1903 – November 21, 1997) was president of Columbia University during the Columbia University protests of 1968. He was also a Professor of Government, advisor to the State Department, and instrumental in the formation of the United Nations.
- Age: Dec. at 94 (1903-1997)
- Birthplace: Jeffersonville, Ohio
Dave Obey
Real Estate BrokerDavid Ross Obey ( OH-bee; born October 3, 1938) is a former United States Representative. Obey served in the House of Representatives for Wisconsin's 7th congressional district from 1969 to 2011. The district includes much of the northwestern portion of the state, including Wausau and Superior. He is a member of the Democratic Party, and served as Chairman of the powerful House Committee on Appropriations from 1994 to 1995 and again from 2007 to 2011. He is the longest-serving member ever of the United States House of Representatives from the state of Wisconsin. On May 5, 2010, Obey announced that he would not seek reelection to Congress in November 2010. He left Congress in January 2011, and was succeeded by Republican Sean Duffy. He began working for Gephardt Government Affairs, a lobbying firm founded by former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, in June 2011.- Age: 86
- Birthplace: Okmulgee, Oklahoma, USA
- Thaddeus John Szarkowski (December 18, 1925 – July 7, 2007) was a photographer, curator, historian, and critic. From 1962 to 1991 Szarkowski was the director of photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
- Age: Dec. at 81 (1925-2007)
- Birthplace: Ashland, Wisconsin
- Charles Wright Mills (1916–1962) was an American sociologist, and a professor of sociology at Columbia University from 1946 until his death in 1962. Mills was published widely in popular and intellectual journals, and is remembered for several books such as The Power Elite, which introduced that term and describes the relationships and class alliances among the US political, military, and economic elites; White Collar: The American Middle Classes, on the American middle class; and The Sociological Imagination, which presents a model of analysis for the interdependence of subjective experiences within a person's biography, the general social structure, and historical development. Mills was concerned with the responsibilities of intellectuals in post–World War II society, and he advocated public and political engagement over disinterested observation. Mills's biographer, Daniel Geary, writes that Mills's writings had a "particularly significant impact on New Left social movements of the 1960s era." Indeed, it was Mills who popularized the term New Left in the US in a 1960 open letter, "Letter to the New Left".
- Age: Dec. at 45 (1916-1962)
- Birthplace: Waco, Texas
Neoklis Polyzotis
ProfessorNeoklis (Alkis) Polyzotis is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California - Santa Cruz.- Gaylord Anton Nelson (June 4, 1916 – July 3, 2005) was an American politician and environmentalist from Wisconsin who served as a United States Senator and governor. A Democrat, he was the founder of Earth Day, which launched a new wave of environmental activism.
- Age: Dec. at 89 (1916-2005)
- Birthplace: Clear Lake, Wisconsin, USA
Richard C. Notebaert
Richard C. Notebaert (born 1947 in Montreal, Canada) is the former Chairman and CEO of Qwest, Tellabs and Ameritech. He was credited for saving Qwest from bankruptcy, and making Ameritech the most successful "Baby Bell".Notebaert is a member of the board of directors of Aon Corp., Cardinal Health Inc. and American Electric Power Company, Inc. He is also the Chair of University of Notre Dame’s Board of Trustees. In 2003, Notebaert was appointed by President Bush to the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee.- Age: 78
- Birthplace: Montreal, Canada
- Joan Cusack, an American actress, was born on October 11, 1962, in New York City. Her parents were Dick Cusack, an advertising executive, actor, and writer, and Ann Paula "Nancy" (née Carolan), a math teacher. The Cusack family is Irish-American and Catholic. Joan is the second of five children, and her siblings Ann, Bill, John, and Susie have also pursued careers in the entertainment industry. Joan's early life was spent in Evanston, Illinois, where she attended the Piven Theatre Workshop as a teenager, laying the foundation for her acting career. Cusack made her mark in Hollywood with her unique comedic style and ability to deliver memorable performances in both supporting and leading roles. Her breakthrough came in 1988 when she played the character of Cyn in Working Girl, earning her first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Over the years, she has appeared in a wide range of films, including In & Out, Addams Family Values, and School of Rock, demonstrating her versatility as an actress. Notably, Cusack received a second Academy Award nomination for her role in In & Out in 1997. Outside of her film career, Cusack has made significant contributions to television and voice acting. She starred in the Showtime hit series Shameless and lent her voice to the character of Jessie in the popular Toy Story franchise. Despite her success, Cusack remains grounded and committed to her craft. She returned to her hometown of Chicago and co-owns a theater called The Gift Theatre. Her dedication to the arts and her impressive body of work have solidified Joan Cusack's place as one of Hollywood's most respected actresses.
- Age: 62
- Birthplace: New York, New York, USA
The 50 Best Joan Cusack MoviesSee all
- 1Addams Family Values61 Votes
- 2Toy Story 243 Votes
- 3School of Rock57 Votes
- Arthur Ocean Waskow (born Arthur I. Waskow; 1933) is an American author, political activist, and rabbi associated with the Jewish Renewal movement.
- Age: 92
- Birthplace: Baltimore, Maryland
Charles R. Van Hise
GeologistCharles Richard Van Hise (May 29, 1857 – November 19, 1918) was an American geologist, academic and progressive. He served as president of the University of Wisconsin (UW) in Madison, Wisconsin, from 1903 to 1918.- Age: Dec. at 61 (1857-1918)
- Birthplace: Fulton, Wisconsin
- Stephen Edward Ambrose (January 10, 1936 – October 13, 2002) was an American historian and biographer of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a longtime professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many bestselling volumes of American popular history. There have been numerous allegations of plagiarism and inaccuracies in his writings. However, in a review of To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian for the New York Times, William Everdell wrote that "he certainly deserved better from some of his envious peers" and credited the historian with reaching "an important lay audience without endorsing its every prejudice or sacrificing the profession's standards of scholarship."
- Age: Dec. at 66 (1936-2002)
- Birthplace: USA, Illinois, Lovington
- Charles "Charlie" Trotter was an American chef and restaurateur.
- Age: Dec. at 54 (1959-2013)
- Birthplace: USA, Wilmette, Illinois
- Howard Hathaway Aiken (March 8, 1900 – March 14, 1973) was an American physicist and a pioneer in computing, being the original conceptual designer behind IBM's Harvard Mark I computer.
- Age: Dec. at 73 (1900-1973)
- Birthplace: Hoboken, New Jersey
- John Vincent Atanasoff, , (October 4, 1903 – June 15, 1995) was an American physicist and inventor, best known for being credited with inventing the first electronic digital computer. Atanasoff invented the first electronic digital computer in the 1930s at Iowa State College. Challenges to his claim were resolved in 1973 when the Honeywell v. Sperry Rand lawsuit ruled that Atanasoff was the inventor of the computer. His special-purpose machine has come to be called the Atanasoff–Berry Computer.
- Age: Dec. at 91 (1903-1995)
- Birthplace: Hamilton, New York
- Peter Francis Straub (; born March 2, 1943) is an American novelist and poet. His horror fiction has received numerous literary honors such as the Bram Stoker Award, World Fantasy Award, and International Horror Guild Award.
- Age: 81
- Birthplace: USA, Wisconsin, Milwaukee
- Michael Thomas Richter (born September 22, 1966) is an American former professional ice hockey goaltender. He played his entire career with the New York Rangers organization, and led the team to the Stanley Cup in 1994. He also represented the United States in international play on several occasions. Richter was named to the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame, alongside his former Rangers and U.S. teammate Brian Leetch in 2008. He is widely considered to be one of the most successful American-born goaltenders of all time.
- Age: 58
- Birthplace: Abington Township, Pennsylvania
- Gilbert Stork (December 31, 1921 – October 21, 2017) was an organic chemist. For a quarter of a century he was the Eugene Higgins Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at Columbia University. He is known for making significant contributions to the total synthesis of natural products, including a lifelong fascination with the synthesis of quinine. In so doing he also made a number of contributions to mechanistic understanding of reactions, and performed pioneering work on enamine chemistry, leading to development of the Stork enamine alkylation. It is believed he was responsible for the first planned stereocontrolled synthesis as well as the first natural product to be synthesised with high stereoselectivity.Stork was also an accomplished mentor of young chemists and many of his students have gone on to make significant contributions in their own right.
- Age: 103
- Birthplace: Brussels, Belgium
- Russell Dana Feingold (; born March 2, 1953) is an American lawyer and politician from the U.S. state of Wisconsin. A Democrat, Feingold served as one of his state's U.S. Senators from January 3, 1993 to January 3, 2011, and was the Democratic nominee in the 2016 election for the same U.S. Senate seat he had previously occupied. From 1983 to 1993, he was a Wisconsin State Senator representing the 27th District.With John McCain, Feingold received the 1999 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. He and McCain cosponsored the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain–Feingold Act), a major piece of campaign finance reform legislation. He was the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act during the first vote on the legislation. Feingold was mentioned as a possible candidate in the 2008 presidential election, but in November 2006 announced he would not run. In 2010, Feingold narrowly lost his campaign for reelection to the U.S. Senate to Republican nominee Ron Johnson. On June 18, 2013, he was selected by Secretary of State John Kerry to replace R. Barrie Walkley as a special envoy to the Great Lakes region of Africa.On May 14, 2015, Feingold announced his candidacy for his old Senate seat in 2016. He was defeated by Johnson in a rematch of their 2010 Senate race.
- Age: 71
- Birthplace: Janesville, Wisconsin, USA
- The legendary producer Walter Mirisch got his start producing low-budget features for the more famous of the "Poverty Row" studios, Monogram, and served as executive producer with its subsidiary, Allied Artists, before forming an independent production company with his brother Marvin (born 1918) and half-brother Harold (born 1907) in 1957. The Mirisch Company, Inc. soon emerged as the preeminent independent production outfit of the period, following the decline of the Hollywood studio system. The Mirisch brothers began as producers with the "Bomba" series of low-budget films starring Johnny Sheffield - formerly 'Boy' in the "Tarzan" movies - as well as with action and Western movies. As Allied Artists head of production, Mirisch also supervised such classics as "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956). When they opened their own shop, the Mirisch Company at first offered Westerns, beginning with "Fort Massacre" (1958) and "Gunfight at Dodge City" (1958) before soon becoming more ambitious. Mirisch was executive producer of "The Magnificent Seven" (1960), the same year the Mirisch Company produced Billy Wilder's "The Apartment," which won the Best Picture Oscar. The Mirisch Company's 1961 release, "West Side Story," also won the Oscar for Best Picture. In 1967, Mirisch, himself, produced the Academy Award-winning Best Picture, "In the Heat of the Night," starring Rod Steiger as a Southern sheriff forced to forge a relationship and take help from a northern African-American police lieutenant (Sidney Poitier). With his proven track record, Mirisch continued producing motion pictures into the 1970s, including an ambitious rendition of "Dracula" (1979). Although the Mirisch brothers had produced NBC's 1959 series "Wichita Town" starring Joel McCrea, the company did not delve into television production on a regular basis until the 1980s, when Mirisch was executive producer of a series of "Desperado" TV movies. The company remained active in TV into the next decade, and in 1996 offered "A Case for Life," a telefilm about two sisters - one who is pregnant and is against abortion; the other who is pro-choice. Key directors associated with The Mirisch Company during the golden years included Billy Wilder, John Huston, Blake Edwards and Norman Jewison. Notable films produced directly by Mirisch or which he supervised include "Fiddler on the Roof" (1971), "The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming" (1968), "The Pink Panther" (1964), "The Children's Hour" (1964), "Some Like It Hot" (1959) and "Toys in the Attic" (1963). Mirisch was also known for his many activities in the entertainment industry. He served four terms as the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and three terms as president of the Producers Guild of America. Walter Mirisch died in Los Angeles on February 24, 2023 at the age of 101.
- Age: Dec. at 101 (1921-2023)
- Birthplace: New York, New York, USA
- Anthony Lewis Granato (born July 25, 1964) is an American former professional ice hockey left winger and current head coach of the Wisconsin Badgers men's ice hockey team. He served as head coach of the United States men's national ice hockey team at the 2018 Winter Olympics. Previously, he also served as head coach of the National Hockey League (NHL)'s Colorado Avalanche, as well as with the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins as an assistant coach.
- Age: 60
- Birthplace: Downers Grove, Illinois
Joanne V. Creighton
Joanne Vanish Creighton (born 1942) is an American academic who served as the 17th President of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts from 1996-2010. On August 10, 2011, the Haverford College Board of Managers named her interim President of Haverford College, replacing Stephen G. Emerson, who resigned.- Age: 83
- Birthplace: Marinette, Wisconsin
- Patrick M. Hanrahan (born 1955) is a computer graphics researcher, the Canon USA Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering in the Computer Graphics Laboratory at Stanford University. His research focuses on rendering algorithms, graphics processing units, as well as scientific illustration and visualization.
- Age: 71
- Edward Lawrie Tatum (December 14, 1909 – November 5, 1975) was an American geneticist. He shared half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1958 with George Beadle for showing that genes control individual steps in metabolism. The other half of that year's award went to Joshua Lederberg. Beadle and Tatum's key experiments involved exposing the bread mold Neurospora crassa to x-rays, causing mutations. In a series of experiments, they showed that these mutations caused changes in specific enzymes involved in metabolic pathways. These experiments, published in 1941, led them to propose a direct link between genes and enzymatic reactions, known as the "one gene, one enzyme" hypothesis. Tatum went on to study genetics in bacteria. An active area of research in his laboratory was to understand the basis of Tryptophan biosynthesis in Escherichia coli. Later, Tatum and his student Joshua Lederberg showed that E. coli could share genetic information through recombination. Tatum was born in Boulder, Colorado. He attended the college at the University of Chicago for two years, and transferred to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he received his BA in 1931 and PhD in 1934. Starting in 1937, he worked at Stanford University, where he began his collaboration with Beadle. He then moved to Yale University in 1945 where he mentored Lederberg. He returned to Stanford in 1948 and then joined the faculty of Rockefeller Institute in 1957. A heavy cigarette smoker, he died in New York City of heart failure complicated by chronic emphysema.
- Age: Dec. at 65 (1909-1975)
- Birthplace: Boulder, Colorado
- Judith Biros Robson (born 1939) is an American nurse, nursing instructor, and politician from Beloit, Wisconsin. She served as a member of the Wisconsin State Senate and represented the state's fifteenth senate district. A member of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, Robson was the first female Democratic State Senate majority leader in Wisconsin history. Robson was born in Cleveland, Ohio and now lives in Beloit. She received a BSN degree from St. John's College in Cleveland, and a Master of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1976. She is a registered nurse. Before being elected to public office, Robson worked as a nurse and as an instructor, primarily at Blackhawk Technical College. Robson was elected to the Wisconsin Assembly in June 1987 in a special election to replace Timothy Weeden (who had been elected to the State Senate). She was reelected to her seat several times and served in that house until 1999. In 1998, she was elected to the State Senate and reelected in 2002. Robson was selected by her peers to be the State Senate Democratic Leader in 2005. She was reelected in 2006 and became the Majority Leader of the Wisconsin State Senate in 2007 following the Democratic takeover of the State Senate in the 2006 elections. The day after passage of the 2007-2008 state budget, the Senate Democratic Caucus elected Russ Decker to replace Robson as Majority Leader.Robson did not seek reelection in 2010 and was succeeded by Timothy Cullen, who had held the senate seat prior to Tim Weeden.
- Age: 86
- Birthplace: Cleveland, Ohio, USA
- Richard K. Nelson (born 1941) is an American cultural anthropologist and writer. His work has focused primarily on the indigenous cultures of Alaska and, more generally, the relationships between people and nature. He is the host to a public radio series called Encounters aired nationally.
- Age: 84
- Birthplace: Wisconsin
- Dave Winer (born May 2, 1955 in Queens, New York City) is an American software developer, entrepreneur, and writer who resides in New York City. Winer is noted for his contributions to outliners, scripting, content management, and web services, as well as blogging and podcasting. He is the founder of the software companies Living Videotext, Userland Software and Small Picture Inc., a former contributing editor for the Web magazine HotWired, the author of the Scripting News weblog, a former research fellow at Harvard Law School, and current visiting scholar at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
- Age: 69
- Birthplace: New York City, New York
- Kevin Murphy was a key member of the team behind the cult comedy classic "Mystery Science Theater 3000" (KTMA 1988-89 / The Comedy Channel 1989-1991 / Comedy Central 1991-96 / SciFi 1997-99), both behind the scenes and as the voice of gumball-machine-shaped puppet Tom Servo. After that series ended its acclaimed run in 1999, Murphy went on to explore its defining concept -- making fun of really cheesy movies -- in concert with his fellow MST3K alums Michael J. Nelson and Bill Corbett, first as The Film Crew and then as RiffTrax. With his immediately identifiable baritone voice and dry, sardonic delivery, Murphy was perhaps the most immediately identifiable member of the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" cast, although he almost never appeared in front of the camera without heavy makeup.
- Age: 68
- Birthplace: River Forest, Illinois, USA
- Brian Christopher Rafalski (born September 28, 1973) is an American former professional ice hockey defenseman. He previously played in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the New Jersey Devils and Detroit Red Wings, in the SM-liiga Hämeenlinnan Pallokerho and Helsingin IFK in the Elitserien for Brynäs IF. After struggling to enter the NHL, spending four seasons in European leagues, Rafalski won the Stanley Cup three times, playing in five Stanley Cup finals in his NHL career (2000, 2001, 2003, 2008, 2009). Rafalski also played for the United States men's ice hockey team in three Olympic ice hockey tournaments (2002, 2006, and 2010).
- Age: 51
- Birthplace: Dearborn, Michigan, USA
- A pioneering figure in nonfiction filmmaking, Grierson was the first to use the term "documentary," in a review of Robert Flaherty's "Moana" (1926). Returing to Britain in 1927 after a stint in the US, he petitioned the Empire Marketing Board to investigate the propaganda potential of film and was commissioned to form a unit within the organization. Inspired by the success of his first effort, "Drifters" (1929), a study of North Sea fishermen, he amassed a talented group of proteges whose work he encouraged and supervised.
- Age: Dec. at 73 (1898-1972)
- Birthplace: Kilmadock, Scotland, UK
- Alando Forest Tucker (born February 11, 1984) is an American college basketball coach for the Wisconsin Badgers, serving as an interim assistant coach for the 2019–20 season. He also had a 10-year professional career from 2007 to 2017, including a stint in the National Basketball Association (NBA). He last played for Hapoel Eilat of the Israeli Premier League.
- Age: 41
- Birthplace: Joliet, Illinois
- Alton Ochsner, Sr. (May 4, 1896 – September 24, 1981), was a surgeon and medical researcher who worked at Tulane University and other New Orleans hospitals before he established The Ochsner Clinic, now known as Ochsner Medical Center. Among its many services are heart transplants.
- Age: Dec. at 85 (1896-1981)
- Birthplace: Kimball, South Dakota
- Edith Clarke (February 10, 1883 – October 29, 1959) was the first female electrical engineer and the first female professor of electrical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. She specialized in electrical power system analysis and wrote Circuit Analysis of A-C Power Systems.
- Age: Dec. at 76 (1883-1959)
- Birthplace: Maryland
- Christos Kostas "Chris" Chelios (born January 25, 1962) is an American former professional ice hockey defenseman. He was one of the longest tenured players in the National Hockey League, and is a three-time Stanley Cup champion - one with the Montreal Canadiens and two with the Detroit Red Wings. Chelios played for the Montreal Canadiens, Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, and the Atlanta Thrashers. When he was called up from the AHL's Chicago Wolves to play for the Thrashers during the 2009–10 NHL season, Chelios was the oldest active player in the NHL and the second oldest of all time, had played the most games of any active player in the NHL, was the last player from the 1981 NHL Entry Draft still active (or any draft from 1986 and earlier), and had the most career penalty minutes of any active player. Chelios currently holds the record for most games played in the NHL by a defenseman, is fifth overall with 1,651 games played, and is tied with Gordie Howe for most NHL seasons played with 26. On May 1, 2009, he appeared in the playoffs for an NHL record 24th time, having missed the playoffs only once (1997–98). Chelios is also the record-holder for most career postseason losses, with 117 (also the most in any professional sport in North America). However, he only lost one Game 7 in his entire career, a 3-2 OT loss in the 1985 Adams Division Finals against the Nordiques. In 2017 Chelios was named one of the '100 Greatest NHL Players' in history.Chelios is of Greek heritage. His cousin, Nikos Tselios, also played professional hockey and is a former first round draft pick of the Carolina Hurricanes. Chelios was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame on November 8, 2013.
- Age: 63
- Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois, USA
- Pankaj Patel is Senior Vice President and General Manager of Service Provider Group at Cisco System.
- Richard Ernest Bellman (August 26, 1920 – March 19, 1984) was an American applied mathematician, who introduced dynamic programming in 1953, and made important contributions in other fields of mathematics.
- Age: Dec. at 63 (1920-1984)
- Birthplace: New York City, New York
Jerry Bock
Lyricist, ComposerJerrold Lewis "Jerry" Bock (November 23, 1928 – November 3, 2010) 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 Sheldon Harnick.- Age: Dec. at 81 (1928-2010)
- Birthplace: New Haven, Connecticut
- Julius Wayne Reitz (December 31, 1908 – December 24, 1993) was an American agricultural economist, professor and university president. Reitz was a native of Kansas, and earned bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees in his chosen field. After working as an agricultural economist, university professor and U.S. government agricultural administrator, Reitz was selected to be the fifth president of the University of Florida, serving from 1955 until 1967.
- Age: Dec. at 84 (1908-1993)
- Birthplace: Olathe, Kansas
Irna Phillips
Screenwriter, Actor, TV Program CreatorIrna Phillips (July 1, 1901 – December 23, 1973) was an American scriptwriter, screenwriter, casting agent and actress. Known by several publications as the "Queen of the Soaps", she created, produced, and wrote several of the first American daytime radio and television soap operas. As a result of creating some of the best known series in the genre, including Guiding Light, As the World Turns, and Another World, Phillips is credited with creating and innovating a daytime serial format with programming geared specifically toward women. She was also a mentor to several other pioneers of the daytime soap opera, including Agnes Nixon and William J. Bell.- Age: Dec. at 72 (1901-1973)
- Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois
