Francis Crick (1916 - 2004)

Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS[1][4] (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004) was a British molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist, most noted for being a co-discoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953 with James Watson and Rosalind Franklin. Together with Watson and Maurice Wilkins, he was jointly awarded the 1962 Nobel […]

Linus Pauling (1901 - 1994)

Linus Carl Pauling (February 28, 1901 – August 19, 1994) was an American chemist, biochemist, peace activist, author, and educator. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific topics. New Scientist called him one of the 20 greatest scientists of all time, and as of 2000, he was […]

Martha Chase (1927 - 2003)

Martha Chase was born in 1927 in Cleveland, Ohio. She had only one sister, Ruth Chase. In 1950 she received her bachelor’s degree from the College of Wooster and in 1964 her PhD from the University of Southern California. In 1952 Chase met the American bacteriophage expert Alfred Hershey at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory from […]

Lise Meitner (1878 - 1968)

Lise Meitner (English: /ˈliːzə ˈmaɪtnər/; 7 November 1878 – 27 October 1968) was an Austrian-Swedish physicist who worked on radioactivity and nuclear physics. Otto Hahn and Meitner led the small group of scientists who first discovered nuclear fission of uranium when it absorbed an extra neutron; the results were published in early 1939. Meitner and […]

Erwin Chargaff (1905 - 2002)

Erwin Chargaff proposed two main rules in his lifetime which were appropriately named Chargaff’s rules. The first and best known achievement was to show that in natural DNA the number of guanine units equals the number of cytosine units and the number of adenine units equals the number of thymine units. In human DNA, for […]

Rosalind Franklin (1920 - 1958)

Rosalind Elsie Franklin (25 July 1920 – 16 April 1958) was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer who made contributions to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, coal, and graphite. Although her works on coal and viruses were appreciated in her lifetime, her contributions to the discovery […]

Rachel Carson (1907 - 1964)

Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist, author, and conservationist whose book Silent Spring and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement. Rachel Carson began her career as an aquatic biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in […]

John Muir (1838 - 1914)

John Muir (/mjʊər/; April 21, 1838 – December 24, 1914) also known as “John of the Mountains”, was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, glaciologist and early advocate for the preservation of wilderness in the United States. His letters, essays, and books describing his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada, have been read […]

Aldo Leopold (1887 - 1948)

In 1909, Aldo Leopold was assigned to the Forest Service’s District 3 in the Arizona and New Mexico territories. At first, he was a forest assistant at the Apache National Forest in the Arizona Territory. In 1911, he was transferred to the Carson National Forest in northern New Mexico. Leopold’s career, which kept him in […]

Arthur J. Jackson (1924 - 2017)

Arthur J. Jackson was born in Cleveland, Ohio on October 18, 1924. He moved to Portland, Oregon with his parents in 1939, and completed Grant High School there. After graduation, he worked in Alaska for a naval construction company until November 1942, when he returned to Portland and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps […]

Gabe Pressman (1924 - 2017)

After earning his master’s degree from Columbia in 1947, Gabe Pressman worked for a short period as a journalist for the Newark Evening News. Columbia then awarded him a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship, and he spent the next 15 months in Europe as a freelance journalist, contributing feature stories for various outlets, including the Overseas News […]

Michael Powell (1905 - 1990)

Michael Powell entered the film industry in 1925 through working with director Rex Ingram at the Victorine Studios in Nice, France (the contact with Ingram was made through Powell’s father, who owned a hotel in Nice). He first started out as a general studio hand, the proverbial “gofer”: sweeping the floor, making coffee, fetching and […]

Robert Coote (1909 - 1982)

Robert Coote was born in London and educated at Hurstpierpoint College in Sussex. He began his stage career at the age of 16, performing in Britain, South Africa, and Australia before arriving in Hollywood in the late 1930s. He played a succession of pompous British types in supporting roles, including a brief but memorable turn […]

Cy Endfield (1914 - 1995)

Cy Endfield was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He attended Yale University and began his career as a theatre director and drama coach, becoming a significant figure in New York’s progressive theatre scene. It was largely the shared interest of magic that led Orson Welles to become aware of Endfield and his recruitment as an apprentice […]

Douglas Hickox (1929 - 1988)

Douglas Hickox (10 January 1929 – 25 July 1988) was an English film director. Hickox was born in London, where he was educated at Emanuel School. Hickox worked extensively as an assistant director and second unit director throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. ‘’The British B Film’’ (Steve Chibnall & Brian McFarlane; BFI, 2009) credits […]

Milo O’Shea (1926 - 2013)

Milo O’Shea began acting on the stage, then moved into film in the 1960s. He became popular in the United Kingdom, as a result of starring in the BBC sitcom Me Mammy alongside Yootha Joyce. In 1967–68 he appeared in the drama Staircase, co-starring Eli Wallach and directed by Barry Morse, which stands as Broadway’s […]

Anita Pallenberg (1942 - 2017)

Anita Pallenberg appeared in over a dozen films over a 40-year span. One of her first appearances was as the Great Tyrant in Roger Vadim’s science fiction film Barbarella (1968); the character’s voice was dubbed by Joan Greenwood. She played the sleeper wife of Michel Piccoli in Dillinger Is Dead (1969), directed by Marco Ferreri. […]

John Avildsen (1935 - 2017)

After starting out as an assistant director on films by Arthur Penn and Otto Preminger, John Avildsen received his first success with the low budget feature Joe (1970) which received critical acclaim for star Peter Boyle and moderate box office business. This was followed by another critical success, Save the Tiger (1973), that was nominated […]

Allan Holdsworth (1946 - 2017)

Allan Holdsworth (6 August 1946 – 15 April 2017) was a British guitarist and composer. He released twelve studio albums as a solo artist and played a variety of musical styles in a career spanning more than four decades, but is best known for his work in jazz fusion. Allan Holdsworth was known for his […]

Lisa Spoonauer (1972 - 2017)

Lisa Ann Spoonauer (December 16, 1972 – May 20, 2017) was an American character actress best known for the role of Caitlin Bree in Clerks, which she reprised for an episode in the animated series. Lisa Spoonauer was born in Rahway, New Jersey, and raised in Freehold Township. She attended Brookdale Community College, where she […]

Venus Ramey (1924 - 2017)

Venus Ramey became the first Miss America to run for public office, seeking a seat in the Kentucky House of Representatives. She was wooed by Hollywood in 1947, but dissatisfied with show business, she returned home to her Eubank, Kentucky, tobacco farm (which she maintained for over 50 years) in Lincoln County, Kentucky. She married […]

Stephen Furst (1954 - 2017)

Stephen Furst worked as a pizza delivery driver while looking for acting jobs in the mid-1970s, and included his head shot in pizza boxes. After Matty Simmons saw his photo, Furst was cast as Flounder in National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978). He reprised this role in the 1979 spin-off series Delta House. Others include ‘Junior’ […]

Tony Liscio (1940 - 2017)

Tony Liscio was selected by the Green Bay Packers in the third round (42nd overall) of the 1963 NFL Draft. He was also drafted by the New York Jets in the tenth round (75th overall) of the 1963 AFL Draft. During training camp he was used as a defensive end and defensive tackle. He was […]

Larry Grantham (1938 - 2017)

James Larry Grantham (September 16, 1938 – June 17, 2017) was an American collegiate and professional football player. A member of the Ole Miss Athletic Hall of Fame, he was a linebacker at the University of Mississippi who came to the American Football League’s New York Titans in the 1960 college draft and helped form […]

Greg Allman (1947 - 2017)

Greg Allman Gregg Allman, the singer, musician and songwriter who played an essential role in the invention of Southern rock, has died at the age of 69 of complications from liver cancer. Allman’s rep confirmed to Rolling Stone that the artist died Saturday afternoon. Allman “passed away peacefully at his home in Savannah, Georgia,” a statement on […]

Sonny West (1937 - 2017)

Sonny West Sonny West has died in Nashville after a long illness. He was 79 years old. He had been suffering lung cancer.Sonny was a member of Elvis Presley’s entourage and met him for the first time in 1958 before Elvis left for his military service in Germany. Later he came to work for Elvis, […]

Roger Smith (1932 - 2017)

Roger Smith Roger Smith, who brought glamour to the TV detective genre as a hip private eye on “77 Sunset Strip,” has died. He was 84. Jack Gilardi, who is the agent of Smith’s widow, actress Ann-Margret, said the actor died Sunday morning at a Los Angeles hospital after battling a terminal illness. Smith had […]

Ernie Wilkins (1922 - 1999)

Ernie Wilkins was born in St. Louis, Missouri. In his early career he played in a military band, before joining Earl Hines‘s last big band. He worked with Count Basie from 1951 to 1955, eventually leaving to work free-lance as a jazz arranger and songwriter. His success declined in the 1960s, but revived after work with Clark Terry, […]

Charlie Fowlkes (1916 - 1980)

Charlie Fowlkes (16 February 1916 – 9 February 1980) was an American baritone saxophonist, best known for his time withCount Basie, which lasted for more than twenty-five years. Charlie Fowlkes was born in New York, and studiedalto and tenor saxophone, clarinet, and violinbefore settling on the baritone sax (he also played occasional flute). He spent most of his early career in New York, playing with Tiny […]

Frank Foster (1928 - 2011)

Frank Foster was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and educated at Wilberforce University. In 1949, he moved to Detroit, Michigan, where he joined the local jazz scene, playing with musicians such as Wardell Gray. Drafted into the US Army in 1951, Foster served in Korea with the 7th Infantry Division. Upon finishing his military service in 1953 he joined Count Basie’s […]