/ Stars that died in 2023

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Vincenzo Consolo, Italian writer, died he was 78.

Vincenzo Consolo  was an Italian writer died he was 78..

(18 February 1933 – 21 January 2012[1])

Consolo was born in Sant'Agata di Militello, but resided in Milan from 1969 until his death. He began his literary career in 1963, but gained wider attention in 1976 with Il sorriso dell’ignoto marinaio (The Smile of the Unknown Mariner) and went on to become an award-winning author.[2]


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Roy John Britten, American molecular biologist, died he was 92.

Roy John Britten was an American molecular biologist known for his discovery of repeated DNA sequences in the genomes of eukaryotic organisms, and later on the evolution of the genome died he was 92..[1]

(1 October 1919 – 21 January 2012) 


Early life and education

Roy Britten was born in Washington, D.C.. He attended Upper Canada College in Toronto, Ontario, and then went to the University of Virginia to study physics. He enrolled at Johns Hopkins University as a graduate student in physics in 1940. At the beginning of World War II, he was recruited to work on the Manhattan Project. In 1951, he received his Ph.D. from Princeton University.[2] His Ph.D. thesis was entitled The Scattering of 32 MeV Protons from Several Elements.

Scientific career

From 1951 to 1971, he was a staff member at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. While there he attended the phage course at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and started working on the processes by which genetic information becomes expressed as proteins. This work was conducted with colleagues Bill H. Hoyer, Brian J. McCarthy, Ellis T. Bolton, Richard B. Roberts, David Kohne, and others.[3][4] This work led him to want to understand the structure of the chromosome, which was little understood at the time. He developed a new method to explore the sequence structure of DNA using the idea of DNA hybridization. Through this work, he showed that eukaryotic genomes have many repetitive, non-coding DNA sequences, known as repeated sequences.[5][6] These are now known to be important in the regulation of gene expression in most cells. Shortly thereafter, a theoretical paper with Eric Davidson laid some of the important groundwork for our modern understanding of the regulation of gene expression.[7]
Britten then moved to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he remained for the rest of his career. He was a Visiting Associate from 1971 to 1973, a Senior Research Associate from 1973 to 1981 and Distinguished Carnegie Senior Research Associate from 1981 to 1999. In 1991 he also became Adjunct Professor at the University of California, Irvine (UCI).[8] In 1999 he became Distinguished Carnegie Senior Research Associate in Biology, Emeritus, at Caltech.[8] He continued to work on DNA sequence structure, with a particular focus on evolutionary relationships. He made important contributions to the DNA relationships of Humans and Great Apes, and especially to the importance of transposable elements in how genes change over evolutionary history.

Personal life

Roy married Barbara Hagen in 1947. In the 1950s they moved to Virginia while Roy was working at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. They had 2 children, Greg born in 1956 and Ken born in 1958. In 1971, the family moved to California so Roy could join Eric Davidson at Caltech. In 1977 he was divorced from Barbara, and eventually married Jacqueline Reid in 1986. Barbara died of heart failure in 2000, Jackie of throat cancer in 2001.
Roy was an avid sailor, painter, reader and writer.[2]

Illness and death

In August, 2011, Britten was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. On 21 January 2012, he died peacefully in his sleep at home in California.[9]


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Saud Nasser Al-Saud Al-Sabah, Kuwaiti royal, diplomat and politician, died he was 68.

Shaikh Saud Nasser Al-Saud Al-Sabah [2] was a member of the Kuwaiti royal family and the former Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States and Great Britain died he was 68.. He was also oil minister from 1998 to 2001.[2]
 
 (3 October 1944[1] – 21 January 2012)

He and his daughter Nayirah were reportedly involved in Citizens for a Free Kuwait – a front group established by the Kuwaiti government to promote US involvement in the First Gulf War. This involvement was covered in the 1992 documentary film To Sell a War.

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Dudley Thompson, Jamaican politician and diplomat, died he was 95.

Dudley Joseph Thompson, OJ, QC, was a Jamaican Pan-Africanist, politician and diplomat, who made a contribution to jurisprudence and politics in the Caribbean, Africa and elsewhere internationally  died he was 95.

(19 January 1917 – 20 January 2012)

Biography

Born in Panama, to Daniel and Ruby Thompson, he was raised in Westmoreland, Jamaica, where he was a student at The Mico (now Mico University College) in the 1930s.[1] After a short period as headmaster of a rural school, he joined the Royal Air Force during the Second World War - one of Britain's first black pilots - and saw active service (1941-5) as a flight lieutenant in RAF Bomber Command over Europe, being awarded several decorations.
In 1946, he went to England to attend Merton College, Oxford University, where he studied jurisprudence, as a Rhodes Scholar, obtaining degrees as a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Civil Law.[2] From his university days he was a close associate of pan-Africanists such as Kwame Nkrumah, George Padmore and C.L.R. James. After qualifying as a barrister at Gray's Inn in the early 1950s, and doing tutelage with Dingle Foot, QC, Thompson went on to practise law in Africa - in Tanganyika and Kenya, where he became involved in the nationalist movements. He assembled the international legal team that defended Jomo Kenyatta in his trial after he had been seized by the British colonialists in 1952 and subsequently charged with treason, accused of being an instigator of the Mau Mau rebellion. Later as President of Kenya, Kenyatta memorably placed his hand on Thompson sitting beside him and said: "This man saved my life."[3] In Tanzania, where he was a friend of Julius Nyerere, Thompson is remembered as a founder of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU).
In the mid-1950s he returned to Jamaica, and continued to educate people about furthering the links between Africa and the Caribbean, visiting schools to deliver inspirational addresses about the continent (Jamaica-born writer Lindsay Barrett was inspired to decide to live in Africa by one such visit that Thompson paid to his school, Clarendon College, in 1957).[4] He practised law in Trinidad, Barbados, St. Kitts, Dominica, Bermuda, Grenada, The Bahamas, Belize and elsewhere in the West Indies, playing a role in the independence movements of both Belize and the Bahamas.[5] He was appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1963.
He served as a member of the Jamaican Senate from 1962 to 1978, and a member of the House of Representatives from 1978 to 1983. In the People's National Party (PNP) administration under Prime Minister Michael Manley, he was Minister of State for Foreign Affairs (1972-7), Minister of Mining and Natural Resources (1977-8), and Minister of National Security and Justice (1978–80). He was also a vice-president and later chairman of the PNP.[6]
Dudley Thompson represented Jamaica in many international forums, including the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity (OAU). In 1992 he was empanelled as a member of the Eminent Persons Group charged with implementing the movement for reparations for slavery to Africa and the African diaspora, under the auspices of the OAU.
Thompson was appointed Ambassador and High Commissioner to several African countries, including Nigeria, Ghana, Namibia and Sierra Leone, based in Nigeria until 1995.[7][8]
He died at the age of 96 in New York City.

Awards

Thompson was a recipient of the Order of Jamaica, one of Jamaica's most prestigious decorations, for distinguished service in the field of International Affairs and his contribution to the legal developments in Jamaica.
He was awarded the Mico Old Students' Gold Medal - the most prestigious teacher's award.
The African Union declared him a 'first citizen' of the continent because of his work for Africa internationally. The OAU had earlier awarded him a medal in recognition of his status as a "Legend of Africa".
In 2006 in Ghana he was honoured as a "Living Legend of Africa"

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Jiří Raška, Czech ski jumper, Olympic gold medalist (1968), died from heart disease he was 70.

Jiří Raška was a Czech skier died from heart disease he was 70.. He is regarded as the most famous Czech ski jumper, Olympic winner of the century.[1]

(Czech pronunciation: [ˈjɪr̝iː ˈraʃka]; February 4, 1941 – January 20, 2012)


Early life

He was born in Frenštát pod Radhoštěm in 1941. His father died of leukaemia when Jiří Raška was nine years old, leaving his mother to raise four children on her own. His interest in winter sports was not surprising. His cousin and uncle, both active jumpers, took him as their disciple. "We were saying that children in Frenštát are born with skis on their feet,"[2] Raška said in the interview for Czech newspaper Lidové noviny. Raška was however also active in other sports, like football, cycling and handball.

Introduction to ski jumping

As a young jumper he got into coach Zdeněk Remsa's legendary group, the “Remsa Boys”. When military service on Šumava threatened Raška’s budding career, Remsa arranged his entrance into the military sports club Dukla Liberec. In 1964 he travelled to the Winter Olympic Games in Innsbruck as a substitute. There he watched Josef Matouš, who led after the first round and had an opportunity to become the second Czech Winter Olympic medalist, but ended up without a medal. Four years later, Raška was in a similar situation.

Career successes

Thanks to the fourth place in the 1966 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships and a second place in the Four Hills Tournament, he travelled to the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble as one of the favourites. Raška himself was hoping to take the fifth place and would not have been disappointed with the tenth place. Czech writer Ota Pavel described his first jump in the normal hill event: "It was a beautiful flight in the infinite silence, that took short human age. Painter and editor Ota Mašek nearly fainted, photographer Jarda Skála stopped photographing. Coach Remsa was washing his face with snow and squeaking Norwegian Wirkola stopped squeaking." Raška jumped 79 metres, which was less than Austrian Baldur Preiml, but thanks to better style he led after the first round. In the second jump he did not fare well, reaching only 72.5 meters, but he went on to victory. Jiří Raška became the first Czech winner in the Winter Olympics. He added the silver medal in the large hill event, beaten only by Vladimir Beloussov of the Soviet Union.
That year he managed to win six races in a row. At the 1970 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in Vysoké Tatry, over a hundred thousand visitors came to see him jump. He finished second in the large hill event and eighth in the normal hill event.
In 1969 he became a world record holder for only one day. At the new ramp in Planica he jumped 164 meters, four meters more than was the day old record of his rival Bjørn Wirkola of Norway. However, the following day his record was broken by Manfred Wolf (165 m) from East Germany. Raška's other successes included a silver medal at the World Championships in the large hill in 1970, victory in the Four Hills Tournament the year after, bronze in the historically first Ski-flying World Championships, and fifth place in the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo.
In 1974 he became a coach but continued with active jumping. "I decided to end immediately as the first junior beats me," he said to the Hospodářské noviny (Czech newspaper) [2]. Thus he ended his competition career in 1976 after being defeated by František Novák.

Coaching career

Between 1994 and 1996 he was together with Medal and later on Malec coach of the Czech representation. During the 1990s he was also a coach of the Czech junior representation and vice-chair of the Czech Ski Union. In the Union’s poll he was elected as a Czech skier of the century.
He died in 2012 in Nový Jičín.


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Mario Pastega, American businessman and philanthropist, died he was 95.

Mario Pastega was an American businessman and philanthropist died he was 95.. A soft drink bottler in the state of Oregon for nearly six decades, Pastega was elected to the Beverage World Hall of Fame in 2002. Pastega is best remembered as a patron of education and as the funder and namesake of the Mario Pastega House, a hostel in Corvallis, Oregon offering low cost or free accommodations to families of hospitalized patients in that town.

(1916–2012)

Early years

Mario Pastega was born December 12, 1916 in Weed, California. He was the son of a cobbler named Romano Pastega and his wife, the former Giuseppina Cunial, who worked as a maid.[1] His parents emigrated from a town in the Italian Alps to the United States in 1907, eventually making their way west to open up a shoe repair shop in Weed.[1] Mario worked for his father in the shoe repair store from the age of 12.[2]
Pastega grew up in the home speaking Italian as his first language, learning English only after being enrolled in school in Weed.[1] Pastega was raised a Roman Catholic and remained an active member of the Catholic Church throughout his life.[1]
Pastega trained as a legal transcriptionist, working variously as a court clerk and court reporter, taking trial transcriptions.[2]
Pastega married the former Alma Solari (1917–2008) in April 1938.[3] Together the couple raised five children.[1] The couple's three sons each followed their father into the soda bottling business, each managing one of the company's three plants.[1]

Career

In 1948 Pastega began his ultimate career path when he purchased a half share in the Pepsi-Cola bottling plant of Klamath Falls, Oregon from his wife's brother.[4] The Pastega family remained in that Southern Oregon town until 1961, when the family's bottling empire was expanded through purchase of the Pepsi-Cola bottling plant in Corvallis, Oregon.[2] Pastega and his family subsequently moved to Corvallis to manage that facility.[3]
Pastega subsequently sold his share of the Klamath Falls bottling operation and used the proceeds to purchase additional Pepsi bottling plants in the Oregon towns of Tillamook and Medford.[4]
In the early 1980s, Pastega launched a new business, the Mount Angel Beverage Company, in Mount Angel, Oregon.[4]
Over the course of his life Pastega personally met every president in the history of the Pepsi-Cola Company.[4] In December 2010 Pepsi CEO Donald M. Kendall flew to Oregon to attend Pastega's 94th birthday celebration.[4]
In 2002 Pastega was honored by election to membership in the Beverage World Hall of Fame for his career efforts in the soft drink bottling industry.[5]

Philanthropic efforts

Beginning in 1980 Pastega turned the Corvallis Pepsi bottling plant into a community landmark each winter through its extravagant decoration with Christmas lights.[2] The display, which included a number of mechanized characters, was created by Ole Brensdal, a career employee at Pastega's Corvallis facility.[2] The display has been an annual tradition for over three decades, save for one year when the plant was closed for construction.[2]
Although Pastega sold the bottling company in the spring of 2011 to the Pepsi Beverages Co. of Westchester County, New York, continuation of the now-traditional Christmas display which Pastega launched was preserved.[6] "That's part of the contract — thou shalt keep it open every year. That's a guarantee," Pastega said at the time of sale.[6]
Pastega became a trustee of the Good Samaritan Hospital Foundation in 1981.[4] In this capacity he headed several seven-figure fundraising drives for hospital expansion projects.[4]
In 2004 Pastega became the major benefactor and chief fundraiser for the Mario Pastega House, an endowed 12 room guest hostel for out-of-town family members of patents receiving treatment at Good Samaritan Hospital.[4] Those needing use of the facility may say at it for $20 per night, a fee waived for those in financial need.[4] During the facility's first five years of operations it provided accommodations equivalent to 26,164 motel rooms.[7] In addition to his leading role in ongoing fundraising campaigns on behalf of the project, Pastega and his wife personally gave between $500,000 and $600,000 to the project over the years.[7]
Pastega was also a trustee of the Oregon State University Foundation as well as a founding trustee of the Corvallis Public Schools Foundation, established in 1996.[4] As a donor he endowed the Golden Apple Awards, presented each year to three of the Corvallis School District's teachers and one member of the district's staff.[4]
Pastega and his late wife Alma also created and endowed the Mario and Alma Pastega Awards, awards for exceptional scholarship granted each year to two deserving members of the faculty of Western Oregon University in Monmouth, Oregon.[8]
Pastega also sponsored a student award program for students at Mount Angel Abbey.[1]

Death and legacy

Mario Pastega died January 20, 2012 at Overlake Hospital in Bellevue, Washington following a month-long battle with pneumonia.[4]
Pastega's philanthropic efforts were recognized in 2004 when Pastega received the Oregon Philanthropy Award and in 2009 when he received the Oregon Ethics in Business Award.[4]
Pastega was remembered by Oregon State University President Ed Ray as a "tremendous friend of the university" who together with his wife served "as shining examples of what it means to live with respect and kindness for all."[4]


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Marion Mathie, British actress (Lolita), died she was 86.

Marion Mathie [1] was an English actress[2] who appeared in the last four series of Rumpole of the Bailey as his fearsome wife;[3] and many other roles in other productions, including Mrs Susan Wyse in the London Weekend Television adaptation of the Mapp and Lucia books by E. F. Benson died she was 86..[4]

(February 6, 1925 – January 20, 2012)



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Dickey Betts died he was 80

Early Career Forrest Richard Betts was also known as Dickey Betts Betts collaborated with  Duane Allman , introducing melodic twin guitar ha...