/ Stars that died in 2023

Monday, January 9, 2012

David Servan-Schreiber, French physician, neuroscientist and author, died from cancer he was , 50.

David Servan-Schreiber  was a French physician, neuroscientist and author died from cancer he was , 50. He was a clinical Professor of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He was also a lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine of Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1.

(April 21, 1961 – July 24, 2011)

Life and career

Servan-Schreiber was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, he was co-founder and then director of the Centre for Integrative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Following his volunteer activity as physician in Iraq in 1991, he was one of the founders of the US branch of Médecins Sans Frontières, the international organization that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999. He also served as volunteer in Guatemala, Kurdistan, Tajikistan, India, and Kosovo.[3] He was also a founding board member of Environmental Health Trust [1]and a leader in efforts to promote safer cell phone use [2][3]
In 2002 he was awarded the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Society Presidential Award for Outstanding Career in Psychiatry. He is the author of Healing Without Freud or Prozac (translated in 29 languages, 1.3 million copies sold), and Anticancer: A New Way of Life (translated in 35 languages, New York Times best-seller, 1 million copies in print) in which he discloses his own diagnosis with a malignant brain tumor at the age of 31 and the treatment program that he put together to help himself beyond his surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy.
He was also a regular columnist for Ode magazine and other publications.

Later life and death

Having been treated twice for a malignant brain tumor, Servan-Schreiber became a leading figure in his engagement for integrative approaches to the prevention and treatment of cancer. He popularized his knowledge through teaching seminars, lectures, books, a blog and audio books. He died of brain cancer in Fécamp on July 24, 2011.[4]
David Servan-Schreiber was the eldest son of the late French journalist, author and politician Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber.[5]

Bibliography

  • Anticancer - Prévenir et lutter grâce à nos défenses naturelles, Éditions Robert Laffont, S.A., Paris 2007, ISBN 978-2-221-10871-0
  • On peut se dire au revoir plusieurs fois, Éditions Robert Laffont, S.A., Paris 2011, ISBN 978-2-221-12704

     

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    G. D. Spradlin, American actor (North Dallas Forty, The Godfather Part II) died he was , 90 .

    Gervase Duan "G.D." Spradlin was an American actor died he was , 90 .. He often played devious authority figures. He is credited in over 70 television and film productions, and performed alongside such notable actors as Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Johnny Depp, and George C. Scott, among others.

    (August 31, 1920 – July 24, 2011)

    Early life

    Spradlin was born on August 31, 1920, in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma. His parents both worked as schoolteachers. Spradlin obtained his bachelor's degree in education from the University of Oklahoma. He then served in the Army Air Force during World War II, where he was stationed in China.[1]
    Following World War II, Spradlin returned to the University of Oklahoma, where he completed a law degree in 1948.[1] He first began his career as an attorney working in Venezuela and then became an independent oil producer forming Rouge Oil Company.[1] Before he turned to acting he was active in local politics campaigning for John F. Kennedy in 1959. He joined the Oklahoma Repertory Theatre in 1964.[2]

    Career

    A notable break for Spradlin resulted from his work in television in the 1960s. Fred Roos had cast Spradlin in such television shows as I Spy and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.. When Roos co-produced The Godfather Part II, he recommended Spradlin play the role of Senator Geary.[2] He worked with Jack Webb on the series Dragnet playing multiple roles from a safecracker to a low-level con man.[3]
    Spradlin portrayed a corrupt U.S. Senator from Nevada, Pat Geary, in The Godfather, Part II. He also played a conspirator in the attempted assassination of a state governor in Nick of Time. Among his film credits are One on One (1977) (as an authoritarian basketball coach), Apocalypse Now (as the general who assigns Martin Sheen's character to the search mission).[2] He played the head football coach B.A. Strother in North Dallas Forty (1979), General Durrell the commandant of the "Carolina Military Institute" in the 1983 movie The Lords of Discipline, and Ed Wood and The Long Kiss Goodnight, as the President of the United States.[3]
    In 1984, Spradlin played a villainous Southern sheriff in Tank. In 1988, he played Admiral Raymond A. Spruance in the miniseries War and Remembrance. In 1989, Spradlin played a small role in the film War of the Roses as a divorce lawyer, with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.[1]
    Spradlin retired from acting after his last film, Dick (1999), in which he played Ben Bradlee.[1] He appeared in the Electronic Arts Godfather II video game in 2009.

    Death

    Spradlin died of natural causes at his cattle ranch in San Luis Obispo, California on July 24, 2011 at the age of 90. His first wife, Nell, with whom he had two daughters, died in 2000. He was survived by his second wife, Frances Hendrickson, whom he married in 2002.[1]

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    Thursday, January 5, 2012

    Skip Thomas, American football player (Oakland Raiders), died from an apparent heart attack he was , 61

    Alonzo "Skip" Thomas, a.k.a. "Dr. Death", was an American football cornerback who played in the National Football League died from an apparent heart attack he was , 61.


    (February 7, 1950 – July 24, 2011)

    College career

    Thomas played college football at the University of Southern California.

    Professional career


    Thomas played for the Oakland Raiders his entire professional career between 1972 and 1977. He had back-to-back six-interception seasons in 1974 and 1975. Although it is commonly believed that his fierce tackling got him the nickname "Doctor Death," the truth is that someone who first met him thought that he looked like the cartoon character "Dr. Death," and the monicker stuck.[1]

    Death

    Thomas died of a heart attack on July 24, 2011.[2]

     

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    Jane White, American actress (Beloved, Klute, Once Upon a Mattress) died .she was , 88

    Jane White was an actress of African American and European descent. Born in New York City, she attended Smith College and The New School died she was , 88
    In 1945, she made her Broadway debut in Strange Fruit. This performance was followed by roles in Razzle Dazzle, The Insect Comedy, The Climate of Eden, Take a Giant Step, Jane Eyre, and The Power and The Glory. In 1959, she opened the acclaimed musical, Once Upon a Mattress, originating the role of Queen Aggravain alongside Carol Burnett and Joseph Bova. She won an Obie Award in 1971 for sustained achievement.

    (October 30, 1922 – July 24, 2011)

    Early life

    Jane was born to Walter Francis White, a notable civil rights leader and national secretary of the NAACP from 1931–1955, and Gladys Leah Powell. She grew up in the fashionable Sugar Hill neighborhood of Harlem at 409 Edgecombe Avenue. The house was nicknamed "The White House of Harlem" because of the prominent and important figures who were part of her parents' circle. She had one brother, Walter Carl Darrow White.[4][5]

    Career

    Early career

    In 1945, White secured her first part playing the lead role of "Nonnie" in the Broadway production of Strange Fruit. The play was an adaptation of the controversial novel about interracial love in the South. She was originally recommended for the part by Paul Robeson, a friend of the White family.[5] The play opened to mixed reviews, but both White and the play received positive attention from Eleanor Roosevelt, then First Lady, who wrote her own review in her column My Day. Of White's performance, Roosevelt wrote: "I should like to pay tribute to the cast of this play as a whole, but particularly to Jane White whose first venture this is on the stage and who plays her part with restraint and beauty."[6]
    In 1959, White played the role of the scheming Queen Aggravain in Once Upon a Mattress, in which Carol Burnett made her Broadway debut.[5]

    1970s-present

    White continued to work steadily in theatre and occasionally in television and movies from the 1970s through the 2000s. Her theatrical work has spanned summer stock, off-Broadway, and on-Broadway shows. Much of her work was in classical dramas, with particular focus on Shakespeare; she won an Obie Award for her roles in the 1965-66 New York Shakespeare Festival as Volumnia in Coriolanus and the Princess of France in Love's Labour's Lost.
    She won the 1988-89 Los Angeles Critics Circle Award for her role as the Mother in Federico Garcia Lorca's Blood Wedding. She has additionally played roles in such dramas as Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis and Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts; comedies such as Paul Rudnick's I Hate Hamlet; and musicals such as Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music and the 2001 production of Sondheim's Follies, to name a small selection.[5]
    In addition to the productions of Once Upon a Mattress, her television work included a 1979 stint on the soap operas The Edge of Night, A World Apart, and Search for Tomorrow. She was one of the first African-American actresses to play a role under contract on soap operas when she originated the role of Lyndia Holliday, R. N. on The Edge of Night. In 1998 she played the schoolteacher Lady Jones in the movie version of Toni Morrison's Beloved.[7] From 1979-80, White starred in a self-written, one-woman cabaret show entitled Jane White, Who?, which interspersed autobiographical anecdotes and personal reminiscence with songs.[5] As recently as 2006, she continued to perform occasionally in cabaret theater.[8]

    Personal life

    White attended Smith College beginning in the early 1940s. At the beginning of her freshman year, a fellow student in White's dormitory, who was white, told Smith that she would leave the school unless White were forced to leave. She said she refused to share a dormitory with a woman of color. The college told the girl she was free to leave, but White would remain enrolled and in her current rooming situation. The startled roommate elected to stay.[9] White majored in sociology at Smith, but found herself increasingly drawn to musical theatre. She studied voice and acting during her time there as well.[5]She was the first African-American president of Smith's House of Representatives,which was part of the Student Government Association.

    Marriage

    In 1962, White met the New York restaurateur Alfredo Viazzi, and after a short courtship they were wed. They moved to Europe in 1965, but moved back to the U.S. in the late 1960s.[5] Viazzi died of a heart attack on December 28, 1987, aged 66.[10]

    Death

    Jane White died on July 24, 2011, in New York City, aged 88.

     

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    David Aiken, American operatic baritone and opera director died he was , 93.

    David Aiken was an American operatic baritone, opera director, and United States Army Air Corps (USSAC) officer  died he was , 93.. He was particularly associated with the works of Gian Carlo Menotti, and is best remembered for creating the role of King Melchior in the world premiere of Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors.

    (October 4, 1917 – July 23, 2011)

    Life and career

    Born in Benton, Illinois, Aiken studied English at Southern Illinois Normal College where he matriculated in 1935. While a student there he was a member of the university's choir and studied singing privately with Grace Duty in Marion, Illinois. After earning his diploma in 1939, he briefly worked as a high school English teacher and track coach before accepting a post with the St. Louis Municipal Opera. He left that position in 1942 to join the USAAC where he was trained as a fighter pilot and commissioned as a Second Lieutenant. He spent the remainder of World War II flying the Consolidated B-24 Liberator for missions in both Germany and Italy. He remained a reserve officer and Command Pilot in the Air Force with the rank of Leiutenant Colonel up through 1972.[1]
    After WWII, Aiken pursued further studies in music at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington. Shortly after completing these studies, he made his debut on Broadway in May 1950 in the original production of Gian Carlo Menotti's The Consul; having replaced George Jongeyans as Mr. Kofner. After the show closed the following November, he and several of the other Broadway cast members took the show on tour for performances in Paris and London. He later returned to Broadway in 1954 to create the role of Salvatore in the premiere of Menotti's The Saint of Bleecker Street.[2][3]
    After the critical success of The Consul, Menotti was invited by NBC to compose an opera for television which was to be performed by the newly created NBC Opera Theatre (NBCOT). What resulted was the highly successful Christmas opera Amahl and the Night Visitors which was premiered on Christmas Eve of 1951 in a national broadcast to millions.[4] For this production, Menotti enlisted the forces of many of the singers from The Consul; including Aiken who was cast in the role of King Melchior.[3] He continued to portray that role, along with the other original adult cast members, for annual live television broadcasts up through 1962.[5] They also gave annual national tours of Amahl, performing with symphony orchestras in concerts throughout the United States.[6]
    In 1968 Aiken joined the voice faculty at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music where he taught for many years. During the 1970s and 1980s he operated the David Aiken Touring Opera Company which presented annual tours of Amahl and the Night Visitors. Aiken directed the productions and continued to perform the role of King Melchior as well.[7][8]
    David Aiken died in Linton, Indiana at the age of 93.[9]

     

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    Wednesday, December 21, 2011

    Mathilde Aussant, French supercentenarian, oldest person in France died she was 113,


    Mathilde Aussant was a French supercentenarian who was at the time of her death the oldest verified person in France

    (27 February 1898 – 23 July 2011)

    Biography

    She was born in Donges, France,[4] the fifth of eleven children born to François Gaudet and Hélène Halgand. Following the death of her mother, she left Donges for Paris in 1923. She worked as a housekeeper and babysitter. She married a railroad worker from Gare Saint-Lazare, who died in 1936. In 1946, she married another railroad worker, René Aussant, who died in 1961. Their only daughter died in 2007, leaving Aussant without any immediate family.[2] In 1999, she moved to a retirement home. In 2008 she was awarded the Medal of the city of Donges. She died at a hospital in Vendôme on Saturday, 23 July 2011.

    Longevity records

    • On 6 March 2009, Mathilde Aussant aged 111 years 7 days moved into Gerontology Research Group list for Guinness World Records.
    • On 4 November 2010 Eugénie Blanchard died, and Mathilde Aussant aged 112 years 250 days became the oldest person in France.
    • On 7 November 2010, Mathilde Aussant aged 112 years 253 days became one of the top 50 oldest known people from Europe ever.
    • On 27 February 2011, Mathilde Aussant aged 113 years became the 12th known person in the history of France to reach the age of 113.
    • On 21 June 2011 Maria Gomes Valentim died, Mathilde Aussant aged 113 years 114 days became one of the top 10 oldest living people in the world.
    • On 23 July 2011 at 5.45 CET, Mathilde Aussant died at age 113 years 146 days, at the time she was the 10th oldest living person.

     

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    Robert Ettinger, American cryonicist, died from respiratory failure he was , 92.

    Robert Chester Wilson Ettingerwas an American academic, known as "the father of cryonics" because of the impact of his 1962 book The Prospect of Immortality  died from respiratory failure he was , 92. He is considered by some a pioneer transhumanist on the basis of his 1972 book Man into Superman.
    Ettinger founded the Cryonics Institute and the related Immortalist Society and until 2003 served as the groups' president. His body has been cryopreserved, like the bodies of his first and second wives, and his mother.

    (December 4, 1918 – July 23, 2011)

    Personal background

    Ettinger was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants.[7] He served as a second lieutenant infantryman in the United States Army during World War II. Severely wounded in battle in Germany, he received the Purple Heart[1] and recovered after several years spent in a Michigan hospital.[8] He earned two Master's degrees from Wayne State University (one in physics, one in mathematics) and spent his working career teaching physics and mathematics at both Wayne State University and Highland Park Community College in Michigan.[1]
    Ettinger had two children with his first wife, Elaine, David (1951) and Shelley (1954).[1] David gave his first cryonics interview to journalists at the age of 12 and is an attorney. He currently serves as legal counsel to the Cryonics Institute and the Immortalist Society. Robert Ettinger's daughter has had no interest in cryonics.
    Ettinger met his second wife, Mae Junod, in 1962 when she attended one of his adult education courses in basic physics. Junod typed and assisted with editing the manuscripts for both The Prospect of Immortality and Man into Superman. She became active in the Cryonics Society of Michigan (CSM) and edited and was production manager for the CSM monthly newsletter, The Outlook. In the 1970s The Outlook was renamed The Immortalist and Junod continued editorship until the mid-1990s. The Outlook is the longest continuously published cryonics magazine. Junod was an author, feminist, and marriage counselor.
    Ettinger married Junod in 1988 after the death of his first wife.[1] Ettinger described his time with Junod as one of the most satisfying and tranquil times in his life. The couple moved to Scottsdale, Arizona in 1995 and enjoyed a period of domestic life during which time the couple began to ease into retirement from over 30 years of cryonics activism and the attendant burdens of work and controversy.[1] Mae Ettinger suffered a debilitating stroke in 1998 from which she never fully recovered followed by a lethal stroke in 2000, which resulted in her cryopreservation.
    Ettinger died on July 23, 2011 in Detroit, Michigan of natural causes, and was cryopreserved.[9][2]

    Roots of cryonics in science fiction

    Ettinger grew up reading Hugo Gernsback's Amazing Stories.[10] Ettinger was particularly affected when he was 12 years old by a Neil R. Jones story, "The Jameson Satellite," which appeared in the July 1931 issue of Amazing Stories,[10] in which one Professor Jameson had his corpse sent into earth orbit where (as the author mistakenly thought) it would remain preserved indefinitely at near absolute zero. And so it did, in the story, until millions of years later, when, with humanity extinct, a race of mechanical men with organic brains chanced upon it. They revived and repaired Jameson's brain, installed it in a mechanical body, and he became one of their company.[1]
    Ettinger assumed that one day — long before he grew old — biologists would learn the secret of eternal youth. As he grew out of boyhood in the 1930s, he began to suspect it might take a little longer since no scientists were yet working on this particular endeavor.[10] If immortality is achievable through the ministrations of technologically advanced aliens repairing a frozen human corpse, then Ettinger thought everyone could be cryopreserved to await later rescue by our own medically more sophisticated descendants.[10]
    In 1947 while in the hospital for his battle wounds, Ettinger discovered that research in the area of cryogenics was being done by French biologist Jean Rostand; Ettinger wrote a short story elucidating the concept of human cryopreservation as a pathway to more sophisticated future medical technology: in effect, a form of one-way medical time travel. The story, "The Penultimate Trump," was published in the March 1948 issue of Startling Stories[1] and definitively establishes Ettinger's priority as the first person to have promulgated the cryonics paradigm, principally that contemporary medical/legal definitions of death are relative, not absolute, and are critically dependent upon the sophistication of available medical technology. Thus, a person apparently dead of a heart attack in a tribal village in the Amazon will soon become unequivocally so, whereas the same person with the same condition in the emergency department of large, industrialized city's hospital, might well be resuscitated and continue a long and healthy life. Ettinger observed that criteria for death will vary not just from place to place, but from time to time, and so today's corpse could be tomorrow's patient.

    Launching the cryonics movement

    Ettinger waited expectantly for prominent scientists or physicians to come to the same conclusion he had, and to take a position of public advocacy. By 1960, Ettinger finally made the scientific case for the idea, which had always been in the back of his mind. Ettinger was 42 years old and said he was increasingly aware of his own mortality.[10] In what has been characterized as an historically important mid-life crisis,[10] Ettinger summarized the idea of cryonics in a few pages, with the emphasis on life insurance, and sent this to approximately 200 people whom he selected from Who's Who in America.[10] The response was very small, and it was clear that a much longer exposition was needed — mostly to counter cultural bias. Ettinger correctly saw that people, even the intellectually, financially and socially distinguished, would have to be educated into understanding his belief that dying is usually gradual and could be a reversible process, and that freezing damage is so limited (even though fatal by present criteria) that its reversibility demands relatively little in future progress. Ettinger soon made an even more troubling discovery, principally that "a great many people have to be coaxed into admitting that life is better than death, healthy is better than sick, smart is better than stupid, and immortality might be worth the trouble!"[10]
    In 1962, Ettinger privately published a preliminary version of The Prospect of Immortality, in which he said that future technological advances could be used to bring people back to life. This finally attracted attention of a major publisher, which sent a copy to Isaac Asimov; Asimov said that the science behind cryonics was sound,[8] and the manuscript was approved for a 1964 Doubleday hardcover and various subsequent editions which launched cryonics.[1] The book became a selection of the Book of the Month Club and was published in nine languages.[8]
    Ettinger became an "overnight"[10] media celebrity, discussed in The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, Paris Match, Der Spiegel, Christian Century, and dozens of other periodicals. He appeared on television with David Frost, Johnny Carson, Steve Allen, and others. Ettinger also spoke on radio programs coast-to-coast to promote the idea of human cryopreservation.
    Since the commercial publication of The Prospect of Immortality, all those active in cryonics today can trace their involvement, directly or indirectly, to the publication of one or both of Ettinger's books.[citation needed] While Ettinger was the first, most articulate, and most scientifically credible person to argue the idea of cryonics,[citation needed] he was not the only one. In 1962, Evan Cooper had authored a manuscript entitled Immortality: Scientifically, Physically, Now under the pseudonym Nathan Duhring.[11] Cooper's book contained the same argument as did Ettinger's, but it lacked both scientific and technical rigor and was not of publication quality.[citation needed]

    Organizational activities

    Following publication of The Prospect of Immortality, Ettinger again waited for prominent scientists, industrialists, or others in authority to see the wisdom of his idea and begin implementing it. By contrast, Cooper was an activist and must be credited with forming the first cryonics organization (although the word "cryonics" was not to be coined until 1965) the Life Extension Society (LES). LES advocated immediate action to implement human cryopreservation and established a nationwide network of chapters and coordinators to develop a grassroots capability for delivering cryopreservation on an emergent basis. Cooper left cryonics activism in 1969, and was lost at sea in 1983. But his activities with LES provided the basis for the formation of the first Cryonics Societies.
    In 1966 the Cryonics Societies of California and Michigan were formed. Ettinger was elected President of the Cryonics Society of Michigan (CSM). In 1970s CSM was transformed under the direction of Ettinger into the Cryonics Institute (CI) and the Immortalist Society (IS). In 1977, Ettinger's mother, Rhea Ettinger, became CI's first patient[12]. Ettinger was President of both CI and IS until 2003.
    From 1964 until circa 1990 the growth of the cryonics movement was slow. During this period cryonicists suffered from lack of consistent or quality professional medical, legal, philosophical, business or financial support. Admission of interest in, or advocacy of cryopreservation, uniformly resulted in reactions of revulsion, ridicule, or both. Media and public perception were consistently negative. This external pressure was exacerbated by the anxiety and fear felt as cryonicists experienced the death of cohorts and loved ones and were, of necessity, forced to provide whatever level of care they could manage on a more or less mutual aid basis. Cryonics, contrary to public perception at this time, was (and still is) a middle class undertaking, and the resources available were those of mortuary personnel and equipment and procedures which cryonicists were able to construct and devise themselves. An additional worry was the uncertain legal status of cryonics and the ever present possibility of governmental interdiction.
    The growth of the internet has made a crucial difference to the spread of cryonics as an idea, which, despite much media coverage, seems to be mainly dependent upon personal contact and personal investigation.

    Death

    Ettinger died in suburban Detroit on July 23, 2011 at his home in Clinton Township, Michigan. He was 92. The cause was respiratory failure. Ettinger’s body was placed in a cryonic capsule and frozen at minus 371 degrees Fahrenheit, after several days of cooling preparation. Mr. Ettinger was the institute’s 106th client.

    Quotes by Ettinger

    "I had and have, no credentials worth mentioning being only a teacher of college physics and math. It is precisely this that prevented me, for so long, from doing more: I knew I carried no weight, had no formal qualifications, and was not suited for a leadership role. But as the years passed and no one better came forward, I finally had to write, and later felt I had to form organizations (although others had come into existence). This tragedy, in various manifestations, may persist. Potentially effective leaders may have turned aside because I (and later a few other obscure people) reluctantly preempted leadership. Business people and investors may have hesitated because the small, poorly capitalized organizations already in the field have had such limited (although increasing!) success in attracting participants."
    "Tragedy is in the eye of the beholder. As Sid Caesar (or maybe Mel Brooks – one of those really heavy thinkers) said: 'The difference between comedy and tragedy? When the saber tooth tiger eats Moe, that's comedy. When I get a hangnail, that's tragedy.' And if the Tiger of Death eats you, that is the ultimate tragedy; that is when the world ends, when the cosmos disappears, when Everything becomes Nothing."
    "The 'tragedy' of the slow growth of immortalism pertains mostly to them, and perhaps to you – not so much to me or to us, the committed immortalists. We already have made our arrangements for cryostasis after clinical death – signed our contracts with existing organizations and allocated the money. We will have our chance, and with a little bit of luck will 'taste the wine of centuries

    Books by Ettinger


     

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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...