Obituaries

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The Mafia couldn't kill this Italian judge, but COVID-19 did:


Francesco Saverio Pavone (25 March 1944 – 16 March 2020) was an Italian magistrate, chief for several years of the Procura di Venezia.

Born in Taranto on March 25, 1944, he worked for several years as a clerk of the court, where he had won a competition in the late 1970s. In 1980 he took up service in the courthouse in Venice, first in the role of judge in the court and then as investigating judge. In the lagoon city he dealt with investigations on organized crime and kidnappings. In 1988 Pavone's pool (group of magistrates in the same case) rebuilt the complete organization chart of the Mala del Brenta which was wreaking havoc in Veneto, investigations that will lead in 1994 to the trial that dismantled the Mala del Brenta , with Felice Maniero sentenced to 33 years for mafia association. Francesco Saverio Pavone lived under escort from 1989 to 2006, for threats from the Sicilian mafia and members of the Mala del Brenta. In 2016 he retired as chief prosecutor of Belluno.[1]

On March 16 2020, Pavone died at the intensive care unit of the Mestre Angelo hospital at the age of 75, after he tested positive to COVID-19, which caused to him serious lung problems.[2]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Saverio_Pavone

TAKE DUE CARE!

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Gerald Alan Freedman (June 25, 1927 – March 17, 2020) was an American theatre director, librettist, and lyricist, and a college dean.

Freedman was born in Lorain, Ohio, the son of Fannie (Sepenswol) and Barnie B. Freedman, a doctor.[4] His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants.[5] He was educated at Northwestern University under Alvina Krause and others. He earned both BA and MA degrees there.[3][6] He began his career as assistant director of such projects as Bells Are Ringing, West Side Story, and Gypsy. His first credit as a Broadway director was the 1961 musical The Gay Life. Additional Broadway credits include the 1964 and 1980 revivals of West Side Story, The Incomparable Max (1971), Arthur Miller's The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972), the 1975 and 1976 productions of The Robber Bridegroom, both of which garnered him Drama Desk Award nominations as Outstanding Director of a Musical, The Grand Tour (1979) with Joel Grey, and The School for Scandal (1995) with Tony Randall. He was also the off-Broadway director of the rock musical Hair when it premiered at the Public Theater.[7]

Freedman was leading artistic director (1960–1967) and artistic director (1967–1971) of Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival, artistic director of the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland, Ohio (1985–1997), and co-artistic director of John Houseman’s The Acting Company (1974–1977). He taught at Yale School of Drama and the Juilliard School. He was Dean of the Drama School at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (1991–2012). He was the first American ever invited to direct at the Globe Theatre in London.[1] He was a member of the Kennedy Center New Play Committee and the College of Fellows of the American Theatre. He participated in the Oomoto Institute, Kameoka, Japan.[1] He died on March 17, 2020 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Freedman

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Kenny Rogers, singer-songwriter:

Kenny Rogers has died at the age of 81.

The country singer-songwriter and actor “passed away peacefully at home” in Sandy Springs, Georgia, “from natural causes under the care of hospice and surrounded by his family” at 10:25 p.m. on Friday, his family announced via his social media profiles.

“In a career that spanned more than six decades, Kenny Rogers left an indelible mark on the history of American music,” Rogers’ family said in a statement shared online by the icon’s publicist.

It noted how the multi-Grammy Award winning artist’s songs including “The Gambler,” “Islands in the Stream” and “Through the Years” had “endeared music lovers and touched the lives of millions around the world.”



A small private service will be planned “out of concern for the national COVID-19 emergency,” the family said, adding it would celebrate the Country Music Hall of Fame member’s life “publicly with his friends and fans at a later date.”



Fellow country music star LeAnn Rimes was among the first to pay tribute to Rogers, tweeting “you are and forever will be quite the legend.”


https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kenny-rog...b7c544b32d

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Albert Uderzo, French cartoonist


Alberto Aleandro Uderzo (French: [albɛʁ ydɛʁzo]; Italian: [uˈdɛrtso]; 25 April 1927 – 24 March 2020),[1] known as Albert Uderzo, was a French comic book artist and scriptwriter. The son of Italian immigrants, he is best known as the co-founder and illustrator of the Astérix series in collaboration with René Goscinny. He also drew other comics such as Oumpah-pah, again with Goscinny. Uderzo retired in September 2011.

Uderzo came in touch with the arts for the first time during kindergarten, where he was noted as talented for his age. Most of his siblings also shared certain artistic talents, and their mother used sheets of paper and pencils to give the children, especially her oldest son Bruno, something to do. Bruno became an inspiration for Albert and in turn, soon noted the younger brother's talent. At this point, Albert did not yet aim to become a professional artist later in life and instead dreamt about a career as a clown and, after dropping that aspiration, aimed to follow Bruno into the craft of aircraft engineering. At the same time, he came in contact with the American comic and animated cartoon cultures, particularly with the early works of Walt Disney like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. The family moved to the Rue de Montreuil in the 11th arrondissement of Paris in October 1938, changing both schools and the social vicinity. Although Albert, blonde and now equipped with a Parisian accent, was no longer easily recognized as of Italian heritage, he nonetheless had problems in school. His only successful area in his educational pursuits was sketching and the arts. It would take him until around the age of 11 or 12 to go from sketching to painting in colors, however, which was when his parents discovered that Uderzo was color blind. From then on, Uderzo would use labels on his colors, but as he mostly stuck with black-and-white sketching, it would not make a huge impact on his artistic career either way.[5]

In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland and France declared war on Germany in response. Albert's father Silvio, by then 51, was too old to be conscripted into the French army, whereas Albert himself was too young at 12. Bruno, however, was of military age and was called to action. He survived his military service without injury, and the Battle of France lasted between 10 May and 25 June 1940, ending in a decisive German victory and resulting in a German occupation of France. Albert soon finished his basic education at the age of 13 and decided to follow Bruno into aircraft engineering.[5][/url]

Throughout some more creations and travelling for the next few years, he eventually met [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Goscinny]René Goscinny in 1951. The two men quickly became good friends, and decided to work together in 1952 at the newly opened Paris office of the Belgian company, World Press. Their first creations were the characters Oumpah-pah, Jehan Pistolet and Luc Junior.[7][8] In 1958 they adapted Oumpah-pah for serial publication in the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Tintin, where it ran until 1962.[9] In 1959 Goscinny and Uderzo became editor and artistic director (respectively) of Pilote magazine, a new venture aimed at older children. The magazine's first issue introduced Astérix to the French world, and it was an instant hit.[7][10] During this period Uderzo also collaborated with Jean-Michel Charlier on the realistic series Michel Tanguy, later named Les Aventures de Tanguy et Laverdure.[7]

Astérix was serialised in Pilote, but in 1961 the first album Astérix le gaulois (Asterix the Gaul) was published as an individual album. By 1967, the comic had become so popular that both decided to completely dedicate their time to the series. After Goscinny's death in 1977, Uderzo continued to write and illustrate the books on his own, though at a significantly slower pace (averaging one album every three to five years compared to two albums a year when working with Goscinny). The cover credits still read "Goscinny and Uderzo".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Uderzo

Much more here.

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Just learned of the passing at age 81 of the “Fourth J” of the folk music world of the 1960s and 1970s. Julie Felix had California roots but spent most of her productive years in Great Britain where she pretty much became a music superstar. She collaborated with Leonard Cohen among others. David Frost had a hand in getting her discovered. She later returned to this side of the big pond but never managed to catch on here in the states.

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Terrence McNally 

 (November 3, 1938 – March 24, 2020) was an American playwright, librettist, and screenwriter.


Described as "the bard of American theater"[1] and "one of the greatest contemporary playwrights the theater world has yet produced,"[2] McNally was the recipient of the 2019 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement,[3][4] the 2019 Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award,[5] and the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2018, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the highest recognition of artistic merit in the United States.[6] In 1996, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.[7]
He received the Tony Award for Best Play for Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class, as well as the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime.[8][9] His other accolades included an Emmy Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, four Drama Desk Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, two Obie Awards, and three Hull-Warriner Awards.[10]
His career spanned six decades, and his plays, musicals, and operas were routinely performed all over the world.[11] The diversity and range of his work were remarkable, as McNally resisted identification with any particular cultural scene. Simultaneously active in the regional and off-Broadway theatre movements as well as on Broadway, he was one of the few playwrights of his generation to have successfully passed from the avant-garde to mainstream acclaim.[12] His work centered on the difficulties of and urgent need for human connection. For McNally, the most important function of theatre was to create community and bridge rifts opened between people by differences in religion, race, gender, and particularly sexual orientation.[13]
In addition to his award-winning plays and musicals, he also wrote two operas, multiple screenplays, teleplays, and a memoir.[14][15]
He was a member of the Council of the Dramatists Guild since 1970 and served as vice-president of it from 1981 to 2001. In 1998, McNally was awarded an honorary degree from the Juilliard School in recognition of his efforts to revive the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program with fellow playwright John Guare.[12] In 2013, he returned to his alma mater, Columbia University, where he was the keynote speaker for the graduating class of 2013 on Class Day.[16] He received an honorary degree from NYU in 2019.[17]
In an address to members of the League of American Theatres and Producers he remarked, "I think theatre teaches us who we are, what our society is, where we are going. I don't think theatre can solve the problems of a society, nor should it be expected to ... plays don't do that. People do. [But plays can] provide a forum for the ideas and feelings that can lead a society to decide to heal and change itself."[18] He died of complications from COVID-19 on March 24, 2020.[19]
[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrence_McNally][/url]

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a high-level American police officer, CORVID-19:

A Wayne County (Michigan -- that's the county containing Detroit) Sheriff’s Office commander died from the novel coronavirus pandemic Wednesday.

Cmdr. Donafay Collins died due to COVID-19 after being hospitalized for nearly two weeks, Sheriff Benny Napoleon said Wednesday evening. Collins had underlying medical conditions.

He was 63 years old, a husband and a father of four.

The long hospitalization made the news less of a shock, Napoleon said. It didn’t dull the blow.

“It was like someone put an anvil around my neck and just dropped it,” Napoleon said. “And I've been feeling very heavy since all of this transpired because I know that this is not the last of it.”

Napoleon said it’s a hard time to be at the frontlines trying to protect the community.


Eighteen members of his office have tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. They are in isolation and others have self-quarantined due to close contact with those infected. Still, there are likely others infected that are unknown, Napoleon said.

Collins was commander of the Division II jail on Clinton Street in Detroit.

Not all of the infected employees work at the jails, but most of the staff does, Napoleon said. To Napoleon’s knowledge, there were no pending or positives cases in any of the 1,138 inmates between the three jails, he said.

Collins was a member of the department for nearly 30 years, but he and Napoleon go way back, growing up in the same neighborhood on the east side of Detroit, Napoleon said.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/m...085137002/

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Edward Tarr, classical trumpeter

Edward Hankins Tarr (June 15, 1936 – 26 March 2020), was an American trumpet player and musicologist. He was a pioneer in the revival of Baroque and Romantic era trumpet performance practice.


Edward Tarr was born in Norwich, Connecticut. Among his accomplishments is a complete edition of the trumpet works of the Bolognese Baroque Italian composer Giuseppe Torelli. His performance repertory includes Baroque, Classical era and modern works; Mauricio Kagel dedicated works to him in 1971, including Morceau de concours, for trumpeter and electronic tape. In 1953 he was a student of Roger Voisin, principal trumpet of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and in 1958–1959 with Adolph Herseth, principal trumpet of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He also studied musicology in Basel with Leo Schrade (1959–1964) for which he was awarded a degree in 1985.

In 1968 the Edward Tarr Brass Ensemble was formed, the only one of its kind – with four trumpets and four trombones. Modern as well as antique instruments were used to perform Renaissance and Baroque music as well as modern works.
He taught trumpet at the Rheinische Musikschule [de] in Cologne (1968–70). He was director of the Trumpet Museum in Bad Säckingen, Germany from 1985 to 2004, taught modern and Baroque trumpet at the Basel Music Academy

 in Basel, Switzerland (modern trumpet at the Conservatory and Baroque trumpet at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis) from 1972 to 2001 and is teaching Baroque trumpet in the superior conservatories (Musikhochschulen) of Karlsruhe, Frankfurt, and Lucerne.
He owned one of the largest collections of original trumpet literature, which was acquired by the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland's Archives & Collections in 2014. He is also editor of many performance editions (including the complete trumpet works of Torelli mentioned above) as well as an authority on the history of the trumpet. His book The Trumpet was first published in 1977 in Germany as Die Trompete. In 1988 it was translated into English by S.E. Plank and Edward Tarr. When Tarr celebrated his 70th birthday in 2006, Schott published a new edition of the German version, "Die Trompete". The English version was updated and republished in 2008.
His recording career began around 1960 when he became trumpet player in Karl Richter’s Münchener Bach-Orchester. He has recorded over 100 works for many labels including Ariola Records, BIS Records, Capriccio, Christophorus, Columbia Records, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Erato Records, HCC (Haas-Classic Cologne), Hungaroton, Musikproduktion Dabringhaus und Grimm, Naxos Records, Nonesuch Records, Oryx, Tudor, and Vox Records.

His wife is the concert organist and best-selling author Irmtraud Tarr [de]. Amongst his students were Reinhold Friedrich and Håkan Hardenberger.

He died in March 2020 at the age of 83.[1]

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Joseph Lowery

Joseph E. Lowery was born to Leroy and Dora Lowery on October 6, 1921. He attended middle school in Chicago while staying with relatives, but he returned to Huntsville, Alabama, to complete William Hooper Councill High School. He next attended the Knoxville College and Alabama A&M College. Lowery next entered the Paine Theological Seminary to become a Methodist minister. Lowery was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.


Later on, he completed a Doctor of Divinity degree at the Chicago Ecumenical Institute.[1] He married Evelyn Gibson in 1950, a civil rights activist and leader in her own right. She was the sister of the late Harry Gibson, an activist, and elder member of the Northern Illinois conference of the United Methodist Church, Chicago area. She died on September 26, 2013. They had three daughters: Yvonne Kennedy, Karen Lowery, and Cheryl Lowery-Osborne.and Lowery had two sons Leroy Lowery and Joesph Lowery Jr [2]

Lowery was pastor of the Warren Street Methodist Church,[3] in Mobile, Alabama, from 1952 to 1961. His career in the Civil Rights Movement began in the early 1950s in Mobile, Alabama. After Rosa Parks' arrest in 1955, he helped lead the Montgomery bus boycott. He headed the Alabama Civic Affairs Association, an organization devoted to the desegregation of buses and public places. In 1957, along with Martin Luther King Jr., Lowery founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and subsequently led the organization as its president from 1977 to 1997.

Lowery's property was seized in 1959 along with that of other civil rights leaders by the State of Alabama as part of the settlement of a libel suit. The Supreme Court of the United States later ordered this court decision to be reversed. At the request of King, Lowery participated in the Selma to Montgomery march of 1965. He was a co-founder and president of the Black Leadership Forum, a consortium of black advocacy groups. This Forum protested the existence of Apartheid in South Africa from the mid-1970s through the end of the white-minority rule there. Lowery was among the first five black men to be arrested outside the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C., during the Free South Africa movement. He served as the pastor of Cascade United Methodist Church in Atlanta from 1986 through 1992, adding over a thousand members and leaving the church with 10 acres (40,000 m2) of land.
Lowery retired from the ministry, but remained politically active and in Christian activities.

To honor him, the city government of Atlanta renamed Ashby Street for him. Joseph E. Lowery Boulevard is just west of downtown Atlanta and runs north-south beginning at West Marietta Street near the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology and stretching to White Street in the "West End" neighborhood, running past Atlanta's Historically Black Colleges and Universities: Clark Atlanta University, Spelman College, Morehouse College, and Morris Brown College. Perhaps not coincidentally, this street intersects both Martin Luther King Jr., Drive and the Ralph David Abernathy Expressway.

Lowery advocated for LGBT civil rights,[4] including civil unions and, in 2012, same-sex marriage.[5]


Lowery died on March 27, 2020. There was no cause given.[6]

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Jimmy "Toy Cannon" Wynn, rookie on the Houston Colt 45's baseball team which would become the Houston Astros.

James Sherman Wynn (March 12, 1942 – March 26, 2020), nicknamed "The Toy Cannon", was an American professional baseball player who had a 15-year career with the Houston Colt .45s / Astros and four other teams, primarily as a center fielder. Wynn's nickname was "The Toy Cannon" because his bat had a lot of "pop" for his small size (5 ft 9 in (1.75 m), 160 lb (73 kg)).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wynn

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Former US Senator Tom Coburn (Reactionary, Oklahoma)  



Thomas Allen Coburn (March 14, 1948 – March 27, 2020) was an American politician and physician. A member of the Republican Party, he was a United States Representative and later a United States Senator from Oklahoma.
Coburn was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994 as part of the Republican Revolution. He upheld his campaign pledge to serve no more than three consecutive terms and did not run for re-election in 2000. In 2004, he returned to political life with a successful run for the U.S. Senate. Coburn was re-elected to a second term in 2010 and pledged not to seek a third term in 2016.[1] In January 2014, Coburn announced he would retire before the expiration of his final term.[2] He submitted a letter of resignation to Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin, effective at the end of the 113th Congress.[3]

Coburn was a fiscal and social conservative, known for his self-proclaimed global warming denial,[4] opposition to deficit spending and pork barrel projects, and for his opposition to abortion. Described as "the godfather of the modern conservative, austerity movement",[5] he supported term limits, gun rights and the death penalty[6] and opposed same-sex marriage and embryonic stem cell research.[7][8] Democrats have referred to him as "Dr. No" for his refusal to endorse extensive federal spending or welfare programs.[9]

After leaving Congress, Coburn worked with the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research on its efforts to reform the Food and Drug Administration,[10] becoming a senior fellow of the institute in December 2016.[11] Coburn also served as a senior advisor to Citizens for Self-Governance, where he was active in calling for a convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution.[12][13][14]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Coburn

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We lost two big names in country music on successive days.  Jan Howard, a prominent lady of country music, passed on March 28 at the age of 91. Most of her success came in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Once married to legendary Nashville songwriter Harlan Howard, she did backup demos on many songs including the Patsy Cline classic “I Fall to Pieces.”  Among her other credits was singing the line “Mama sang tenor” on a classic Johnny Cash song. Her only number one was a duet with Bill Anderson on the song “For Loving You”.  Her highest charting solo effort was “Evil on Your Mind”, which reached number 5 in 1966. Ms. Howard had three sons, one of which was killed in the Vietnam War, which was the subject of a tribute simply titled “My Son” which peaked at number 15 in 1968. Despite the tragedy she remained an ardent supporter of the military throughout her life.

Joe Diffie, who had a big string of country hits in the 1990s, passed on March 29 due to coronavirus. Among his big hits were “Home”, “If the Devil Danced in Empty Pockets” and “John Deere Green”. He was 61 at the time of his passing.  He was a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and made 13 albums and had more than 20 top 10 hits to his credit. Among others were “Honky Tonk Attitude “ and “Bigger Than the Beatles”. He tested positive for the virus just two days prior to his passing.

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Krzysztof Penderecki
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Krzysztof Penderecki, Gdańsk, 2008

Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki (Polish: [ˈkʂɨʂtɔf pɛndɛˈrɛt͡skʲi]; 23 November 1933 – 29 March 2020) was a Polish composer and conductor. Among his best known works are Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, Symphony No. 3, his St. Luke Passion, Polish Requiem, Anaklasis and Utrenja. Penderecki composed four operas, eight symphonies and other orchestral pieces, a variety of instrumental concertos, choral settings of mainly religious texts, as well as chamber and instrumental works.[1]
Born in Dębica to a lawyer, Penderecki studied music at Jagiellonian University and the Academy of Music in Kraków. After graduating from the Academy of Music, Penderecki became a teacher at the academy and he began his career as a composer in 1959 during the Warsaw Autumn festival. His Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for string orchestra and the choral work St. Luke Passion, have received popular acclaim. His first opera, The Devils of Loudun, was not immediately successful. Beginning in the mid-1970s, Penderecki's composing style changed, with his first violin concerto focusing on the semitone and the tritone. His choral work Polish Requiem was written in the 1980s, with Penderecki expanding it in 1993 and 2005.
Penderecki won many prestigious awards, including the Prix Italia in 1967 and 1968, four Grammy Awards in 1987, 1998 (twice), and 2017, Wolf Prize in Arts in 1987 and the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition in 1992.[2] In 2012, Sean Michaels of The Guardian called him "arguably Poland's greatest living composer."[3]



1933–58: Early years


Penderecki was born in Dębica on 23 November 1933, to Tadeusz Penderecki, a lawyer, and Zofia (née Wittgenstein). Penderecki's grandfather, Robert Berger, was a highly talented painter and director of the local bank at the time of Penderecki's birth; Robert's father Johann moved to Dębica from Breslau (now Wrocław) in the mid-19th century.[4] His grandmother was an Armenian[5] from Isfahan, Iran. Penderecki used to go to the Armenian Church in Kraków with her.[6] Penderecki was the youngest of three siblings; his sister, Barbara, was married to a mining engineer, and his older brother, Janusz, was studying law and medicine at the time of his birth. Tadeusz was a violinist and also played piano.[4]

In 1939, the Second World War broke out, and Penderecki's family moved out of their apartment as the Ministry of Food was to operate there. After the war, Penderecki began attending grammar school in 1946. He began studying the violin under Stanisław Darłak, Dębica's military bandmaster who organized an orchestra for the local music society after the war.[7] Upon graduating from grammar school, Penderecki moved to Kraków in 1951, where he attended Jagiellonian University.[7] He studied violin with Stanisław Tawroszewicz and music theory with Franciszek Skołyszewski.[8] In 1954, Penderecki entered the Academy of Music in Kraków and, having finished his studies on violin after his first year, focused entirely on composition. Penderecki's main teacher there was Artur Malawski, a composer known for his choral works and orchestral works, as well as chamber music and songs. After Malawski's death in 1957, Penderecki took further lessons with Stanisław Wiechowicz, a composer primarily known for his choral works.[9] At the time, the 1956 overthrow of Stalinism in Poland lifted strict cultural censorship and opened the door to a wave of creativity.[10]

1958–70s: First compositions

On graduating from the Academy of Music in Kraków in 1958, Penderecki took up a teaching post at the Academy. His early works show the influence of Anton Webern and Pierre Boulez (Penderecki has also been influenced by Igor Stravinsky). Penderecki's international recognition began in 1959 at the Warsaw Autumn with the premieres of the works Strophen, Psalms of David, and Emanations, but the piece that truly brought him to international attention was Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima (see threnody and atomic bombing of Hiroshima), written in 1960 for 52 string instruments. In it, he makes use of extended instrumental techniques (for example, playing behind the bridge, bowing on the tailpiece). There are many novel textures in the work, which makes great use of tone clusters. He originally titled the work 8' 37", but decided to dedicate it to the victims of Hiroshima.[11]

Fluorescences followed a year later; it increases the orchestral density with more wind and brass, and an enormous percussion section of 32 instruments for six players including a Mexican güiro, typewriters, gongs and other unusual instruments. The piece was composed for the Donaueschingen Festival of contemporary music of 1962, and its performance was regarded as provocative and controversial. Even the score appeared revolutionary; the form of graphic notation that Penderecki had developed rejected the familiar look of notes on a staff, instead representing music as morphing sounds.[10] His intentions at this stage were quite Cagean: "All I'm interested in is liberating sound beyond all tradition."[12] This preoccupation with sound culminated in De Natura Sonoris I, which frequently calls upon the orchestra to use non-standard playing techniques to produce original sounds and colours. A sequel, De Natura Sonoris II, was composed in 1971: with its more limited orchestra, it incorporates more elements of post-Romanticism than its predecessor. This foreshadowed Penderecki's renunciation of the avant-garde in the mid-1970s, although both pieces feature dramatic glissandos, dense clusters, and use of harmonics, and unusual instruments (the musical saw features in the second piece).
In 1968 Penderecki received State Prize 1st class.[13] Due to the jubilee of People's Republic of Poland he received Commander's Cross (1974)[14] and Knight's Cross of Order of Polonia Restituta (1964).[15]

The St. Luke Passion[edit]
Year
Song title
Work
Instrumentation
1968:
"Miserere mei, Deus"
Listen (help·info)
Saint Luke Passion
Chorus

The large-scale St. Luke Passion (1963–66) brought Penderecki further popular acclaim, not least because it was devoutly religious, yet written in an avant-garde musical language, composed within Communist Eastern Europe. Western audiences saw it as a snub to the Soviet authorities. Various different musical styles can be seen in the piece. The experimental textures, such as were seen in the Threnody, are balanced by the work's Baroque form and the occasional use of more traditional harmonic and melodic writing. Penderecki makes use of serialism in this piece, and one of the tone rows he uses includes the BACH motif, which acts as a bridge between the conventional and more experimental elements. The Stabat Mater section toward the end of the piece concludes on a simple chord of D major, and this gesture is repeated at the very end of the work, which finishes on a triumphant E major chord. These are the only tonal harmonies in the work, and both come as a surprise to the listener; Penderecki's use of tonal triads such as these remains a controversial aspect of the work.[16]
Penderecki continued to write pieces that explored the sacred in music. In the early 1970s he wrote a Dies irae, a Magnificat, and Canticum Canticorum Salomonis (Song of Songs) for chorus and orchestra.[12]

1970s–2020: Later years

Around the mid-1970s, while he was a professor at the Yale School of Music,[17] Penderecki's style began to change. The Violin Concerto No. 1 largely leaves behind the dense tone clusters with which he had been associated, and instead focuses on two melodic intervals: the semitone and the tritone. This direction continued with the Symphony No. 2, Christmas (1980), which is harmonically and melodically quite straightforward. It makes frequent use of the tune of the Christmas carol Silent Night.
Penderecki explained this shift by stating that he had come to feel that the experimentation of the avant-garde had gone too far from the expressive, non-formal qualities of Western music: 'The avant-garde gave one an illusion of universalism. The musical world of Stockhausen, Nono, Boulez and Cage was for us, the young – hemmed in by the aesthetics of socialist realism, then the official canon in our country – a liberation...I was quick to realise however, that this novelty, this experimentation, and formal speculation, is more destructive than constructive; I realised the Utopian quality of its Promethean tone'. Penderecki concluded that he was 'saved from the avant-garde snare of formalism by a return to tradition'.[12] "Penderecki has written relatively little chamber music. However, compositions for smaller ensembles range in date from the start of his career to the present, reflecting the changes his style of writing has undergone."[18]

In 1980, Penderecki was commissioned by Solidarity to compose a piece to accompany the unveiling of a statue at the Gdańsk shipyards to commemorate those killed in anti-government riots there in 1970. Penderecki responded with Lacrimosa, which he later expanded into one of the best-known works of his later period, the Polish Requiem (1980–84, 1993, 2005). Later, he tended towards more traditionally conceived tonal constructs, as heard in works such as the Cello Concerto No. 2 and the Credo, which received the Grammy Award for best choral performance for the world-premiere recording made by the Oregon Bach Festival, which commissioned the piece. The same year, Penderecki was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Spain, one of the highest honours given in Spain to individuals, entities, organizations or others from around the world who make notable achievements in the sciences, arts, humanities, or public affairs. Invited by Walter Fink, he was the eleventh composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival in 2001. He conducted Credo on the occasion of the 70th birthday of Helmuth Rilling, 29 May 2003.[19] Penderecki received an honorary doctorate from the Seoul National University, Korea in 2005, as well as from the University of Münster, Germany in 2006. His notable students include Chester Biscardi and Walter Mays. In celebration of his 75th birthday, he conducted three of his works at the Rheingau Musik Festival in 2008, among them Ciaccona from the Polish Requiem.[20]
Penderecki had three children, a daughter from his first marriage by his pianist first wife,[21] and a son and daughter with his second wife, Elżbieta Penderecka (née Solecka), whom he married in 1965.[22] He lived in the Kraków suburb of Wola Justowska. In 2010, he worked on an opera based on Phèdre by Racine for 2014, which was never realized,[23] and expressed his wish to write a 9th symphony.[24] In 2014, he was engaged in the creation of a choral work to coincide with the Armenian Genocide centennial.[6]
On 29 March 2020, Penderecki died in his home in Kraków, Poland after a long illness.[25][26][27][28]
Remembrance[edit]

Bust of Krzysztof Penderecki in Celebrity Alley in Kielce

In 1979, a bronze bust by artist Marian Konieczny honouring Krzysztof Penderecki was unveiled in The Gallery of Composers' Portraits at the Pomeranian Philharmonic in Bydgoszcz.[29] His monument is also located on the Celebrity Alley at the Scout Square (Skwer Harcerski) in Kielce.[30]
A main-belt asteroid – 21059 Penderecki is named in Penderecki's honor.[31]
 List of compositions by Krzysztof Penderecki

Penderecki's compositions include operas, symphonies, choral works, as well as chamber and instrumental music.

Some of Penderecki's music has been adapted for film soundtracks. The Exorcist (1973) features his String Quartet and Kanon For Orchestra and Tape; fragments of the Cello Concerto and The Devils of Loudun. Writing about The Exorcist, the film critic for The New Republic wrote "even the music is faultless, most of it by Krzysztof Penderecki, who at last is where he belongs."[32] The Shining (1980) features six pieces of Penderecki's music: Utrenja II: Ewangelia, Utrenja II: Kanon Paschy, The Awakening of Jacob, De Natura Sonoris No. 1, De Natura Sonoris No. 2 and Polymorphia.[33] David Lynch has used Penderecki's music in the soundtracks of the movies Wild at Heart (1990), Inland Empire (2006), and the TV series Twin Peaks (2017). In the film Fearless (1993) by Peter Weir, the piece Polymorphia was once again used for an intense plane crash scene seen from the point of view of the passenger played by Jeff Bridges. Penderecki's piece, Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, was also used during one of the final sequences in the film Children of Men (2006). Penderecki composed music for Andrzej Wajda's 2007 Academy Award nominated film Katyń, while Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island (2010) featured his Symphony No. 3 and Fluorescences.

Honors and awards

Penderecki conducting Sinfonia Varsovia during the rehearsal, Rudolfinum, Prague Autumn International Music Festival, 2008

Krzysztof Penderecki (first from right) at the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_Artem_ad_Deum_Medal]Per Artem ad Deum Medal award ceremony

• 1959: 2nd Competition for Young Polish Composers in Warsaw organised by the Composers' Union – Penderecki was awarded the top three prizes for the works he anonymously submitted: Stanzas, Emanations, and Psalms of David;[34]
  
  
• 1961: Prize of the UNESCO International Tribune of Composers in Paris for Threnody;[35]
  
  
• 1966: Grand Art Prize of North Rhine-Westphalia for St. Luke Passion[36];
  
  
• 1967: Prix Italia for the St. Luke Passion[36], Sibelius Gold Medal;*[34]
  
  
• 1968: Prix Italia for the Dies Irae in memory of the victims of Auschwitz[36], Grammy Trustees Award for significant contributions, other than performance, to the field of recording;[37]
  
  
• 1972: City of Kraków Award;[34]
  
  
• 1977: Herder Prize (Germany/Austria)[38];
  
  
• 1978: Prix Arthur Honegger for Magnificat (France)[36];
  
  
• 1983: Wihuri Sibelius Prize (Finland)[39], Polish National Award[40];
  
  
• 1985: Premio Lorenzo Magnifico (Italy)[36][40];
  
  
• 1987: Wolf Prize in Arts (Israel),[40] Grammy for Best Contemporary Composition[41];
  
  
• 1990: Grand Cross of Merit of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany[36][40]; Chevalier de Saint Georges;[34]
  
  
• 1992: University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for Adagio – 4 Symphony[42]; Austrian Medal for Science and Art;[34]
  
  
• 1993: Distinguished Citizen Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study at Indiana University, Bloomington, Prize of the International Music Council / UNESCO for Music;[40] Cultural Merit of the Principality of Monaco[40];
  
  
• 1995: Member of the Royal Irish Academy of Music (Dublin),[34] honorary citizen of Strasbourg,[34] Primetime Emmy Award of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences;[34] Pro Baltica Prize[38];
  
  
• 1996: Primetime Emmy Award of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France)[38];
  
  
• 1998: Grammy for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance[41], Composition Prize for the Promotion of the European economy, Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters,[34] corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Munich;[34] Honorary Board of the Vilnius Festival '99, Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas (Lithuania)[43];
  
  
• 1999: Music Prize of the City of Duisburg (Germany);[34]
  
  
• 2000: Cannes Classical Award as "Living Composer of the Year",[34] honorary member of the Society of Friends of Music in Vienna,[44] Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic;[34]
  
  
• 2001: Prince of Asturias Award for Art (Spain)[45], Grammy for Best Choral Performance for Credo,[34] Honorary Professor of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts[34];
  
  
• 2002: State Prize of North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany), Romano Guardini Prize[46];
  
  
• 2003: Grand Gold Decoration for Services to the Republic of Austria[47], Preis der Europäischen Kirchenmusik (Germany), Freedom of Dębica, Eduardo M. Torner Medal of the Conservatorio de Musica del Principado Asturias in Oviedo, Spain; honorary director of the Choir of the Prince of Asturias Foundation, Honorary President of the Apayo a la Creación Musical, Judaica Foundation Medal;
  
  
• 2004: Praemium Imperiale – Music (Japan)[38];
  
  
• 2005: Order of the White Eagle (Poland)[48], Gold Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis[49]
  
  
• 2006: Order of the Three Stars (Latvia)[50];
  
  
• 2008: Polish Academy Award for Best Film Score for Katyn, Commander of the Order of the Three Stars (Latvia), Order of Bernardo O'Higgins (Chile), Golden Medal of the Minister of Culture (Armenia), Commander of the Order of the Lion of Finland[51], Thorunium Medal[52];
  
  
• 2009: Order of Merit of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg,[53] Merit of Armenia;[34]
  
  
• 2011: Viadrina Prize for contributions to Polish-German cooperation (Viadrina European University, Frankfurt)[54][55], Grand Cross of the Order pro Merito Melitensi (Malta)[36];
  
  
• 2012: Paszport Polityki Award[56];
  
  
• 2014: Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana, 1st Class (Estonia)[57];
  
  
• 2015: Per Artem ad Deum Medal[58];
  
  
• 2017: Grammy for Best Choral Performance[41]
  
  
• 2017: New Culture of New Europe Award at the Krynica Economic Forum.[59]
  
  
  

Penderecki was honorary doctor and honorary professor of several universities: Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., University of Glasgow, Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, Fryderyk Chopin Music Academy in Warsaw, Seoul National University, Universities of Rochester, Bordeaux, Leuven, Belgrade, Madrid, Poznan and St. Olaf College (Northfield, Minnesota), Duquesne University, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, University of Pittsburgh (PA), University of St. Petersburg, Beijing Conservatory, Yale University and Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster (Westphalia) (2006 Faculty of Arts).[60]

He was an Honorary Member of the following academies and music companies: Royal Academy of Music (London), Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Rome), Royal Swedish Academy of Music (Stockholm), Academy of Arts (London), Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes (Buenos Aires), the Society of Friends of Music in Vienna, Academy of Arts in Berlin, Académie Internationale de Philosophie et de l’Art in Bern, and the Académie Nationale des Sciences, Belles-lettres et Arts in Bordeaux.[40] In 2009, he became an honorary citizen of the city of Bydgoszcz.[61]

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Rafael Gómez Nieto (29 January 1921 – 31 March 2020) was a Spanish soldier, veteran of the Spanish Civil War and the World War II.[1]

Born in Adra, Andalusia, he moved to Badalona, where he was called up to the "Lleva del Biberó" and participated in the Battle of the Ebro with Spanish Republican Army.[2]

After the war, he went to France where he was interned in the Saint-Cyprien camp. Four months later he was able to reach Algeria with his father, who was in the Argelés internment camp. After the invasion of North Africa by the Allies during World War II, he became part of the 9th Company[3] of the 2nd Armored Division that, made up of Spanish Republicans, was the first Allied military unit that entered Paris after its occupation by the Wehrmacht.[4]
He died on 31 March 2020 in a nursing home in Strasbourg (France), a city where he had lived since 1955, from COVID-19 during the coronavirus pandemic. He was the last living survivor of "La Nueve".[5]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_G%C3%B3mez_Nieto

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Reimar Lüst (25 March 1923 – 31 March 2020)[1] was a German astrophysicist. He worked for the European space science from its beginning, as scientific director of the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO) from 1962, and as Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA) from 1984 until 1990.

Lüst taught internationally, and influenced German politics as chairman of the Wissenschaftsratfrom 1969 to 1972. He was the president of the German Max Planck Society from 1972 to 1984. As chairman of the board of the Jacobs University Bremen, he shaped the international university towards excellence. His awards include Officer of the Légion d’Honneur and the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.



Lüst was born on 25 March 1923 in Barmen (now part of Wuppertal) in North Rhine-Westphalia).[1] At age 10, he attended the Humanistisches Gymnasium in Kassel, but his education was interrupted in 1941 by military service with the German Navy (Kriegsmarine) in World War II.[1] In the navy, he served as a lieutenant engineer on submarines. He was a prisoner-of-war in England and the U.S. from 1943 to 1946.[1]


After being released, Lüst returned to his education in 1946. He received his B.S. in physics from the University of Frankfurt am Main in 1949, and his doctorate from the University of Göttingen in 1951.[1] He was an assistant at the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen from 1951.[2] He was selected as a Fulbright Fellow at the Enrico Fermi Institute of the University of Chicago, and at Princeton University in 1955/56.[2] He was professor at the University of New York, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena.[2] He is credited with contributions the "origins of the planetary system, solar physics, the physics of cosmic rays, plasma physics, hydrodynamics and to the physics of nuclear fusion"[2]

Lüst was interested in European space science from the beginning as "Commission préparatoire européenne de recherches spatiales" (COPERS). He began as Secretary of the Scientific and Technical Working Group, and became Scientific Director of the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO) in 1962, where he influenced the scientific programme until 1964. He was its Vice President from 1968 to 1970-70. Lüst was chairman of the Wissenschaftsrat, an adversary board for German national ans state politics, from 1969 to 1972.[2] [2] For ESRO, he was involved in sounding rocket launches, and with satellites for studies of the upper atmosphere and the planetary medium, directing experiments on the ESRO-IV, HEOS-A and COS-B satellites.[2]

Lüst was president of the German Max Planck Society from 1972 to 1984, and the third Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA) from 1984 until 1990.[1][2] Afterwards, he served as president and later honorary president of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn, as professor at the University of Hamburg, and as chairman and from 2005 honorary chairman of the board of the international Jacobs University Bremen.[2]
Lüst was married to Nina Grunenberg-Lüst (d. 2017), and had two sons from his first marriage to Rhea Lüst.[1] Lüst died on 31 March 2020, days after his 97th birthday.[1]



More at Wikipedia.

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Ellis Louis Marsalis Jr.[1]  (November 14, 1934 – April 1, 2020) was an American jazz pianist and educator. Active since the late 1940s, Marsalis came to greater attention in the 1980s and 1990s as the patriarch of a musical family, with sons Branford and Wynton rising to international acclaim.



Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, Marsalis was the son of Florence (née Robertson) and Ellis Marsalis Sr., a businessman and social activist.[2] Marsalis and his wife Delores Ferdinand had six sons: Branford, Wynton, Ellis III (1964), Delfeayo, Mboya (1971), and Jason. Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo, and Jason also became jazz musicians.[3] Ellis III is a poet, photographer, and network engineer.[citation needed]
Marsalis played saxophone during high school but switched to piano while studying classical music at Dillard University, graduating in 1955.[4] He later attended graduate school at Loyola University New Orleans.[4] In the 1950s and 1960s he worked with Ed Blackwell, Cannonball Adderley, Nat Adderley, and Al Hirt. During the 1970s, he taught at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. His students have included Terence Blanchard, Harry Connick Jr., Donald Harrison, Kent Jordan, Marlon Jordan, and Nicholas Payton.[5]
Though he recorded almost twenty of his own albums and was featured on many discs with such musicians as David "Fathead" Newman, Eddie Harris, Marcus Roberts, and Courtney Pine, he shunned the spotlight to focus on teaching. Marsalis's didactic approach, combined with an interest in philosophy, encouraged his students to make discoveries in music on their own, through experiment and very careful listening.
As a leading educator at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, the University of New Orleans, and Xavier University of Louisiana, Ellis influenced the careers of countless musicians, as well as his four musician sons: Wynton, Branford, Delfeayo and Jason. Marsalis retired from UNO in 2001.[4] In May 2007, Marsalis received an honorary doctorate from Tulane University for his contributions to jazz and musical education.
Marsalis was inducted into The Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2018.[3]
The Ellis Marsalis Center for Music at Musicians' Village in New Orleans is named in his honor. In 2010, The Marsalis Family released a live album titled Music Redeems which was recorded at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC as part of the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival. All proceeds from the sale of the album go directly to the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music.
Marsalis and his sons were group recipients of the 2011 NEA Jazz Masters Award.[6]
Marsalis was a Brother of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc., initiated in 1953 at Epsilon Alpha Chapter, Dillard University.
Marsalis was a Brother of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia fraternity, initiated into Delta Epsilon Chapter (University of Louisiana-Lafayette) in 1965. In 2015, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia announced that Marsalis has been named Sinfonia's 24th Man of Music, the highest honor given by the fraternity to a member, for advancing the cause of music in America through performance, composition or any other musical activity.

On April 1, 2020, Marsalis died at the age of 85 after being hospitalized with COVID-19.[4][7][8]
D

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Ironic, huh? And tragic, too. 

Gita Ramjee FRCPE (c. 1960 – 31 March 2020) was a Ugandan-South African scientist and researcher in HIV prevention. In 2018, she was awarded the ‘Outstanding Female Scientist’ award from the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership.[1] She died in Umhlanga, Durban, South Africa, from COVID-19 related complications.[2]

Ramjee grew up in Colonial Uganda before her family were driven into exile under Idi Amin in the 1970s.[3] She attended high school in India before attending the University of Sunderland in England. She graduated in 1980 with a BSc (Hons) in Chemistry and Physiology. She married a South African-Indian fellow student, Praveen Ramjee, and moved to Durban where she began working in the Department of Paediatrics at the Medical School of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. After her two sons were born she completed her Masters, and subsequently a PhD in 1994.[4]

After completing her PhD in kidney diseases of childhood, Ramjee joined the South African Medical Research Council as a scientist.[4] She rose rapidly through the ranks to head the largest unit of the Council, the HIV Prevention Research Unit. She helped expand the unit from 22 scientific staff to 350 and was instrumental in growing its international reputation.[4]
At the time of her death, Ramjee was the Chief Scientific Officer at the Aurum Institute, a not-for-profit AIDS/Tuberculosis research organisation,[5] as well as director of the South African Medical Research Council's Prevention Research Unit. She received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the International Microbicide Conference in 2012. She was an honorary professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the University of Washington in Seattle, and the University of Cape Town.[5] She was a member of a number of local and international committees including the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) and the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC).[6]

Her specialisation in HIV prevention and treatment research led her to lead the expansion of phase I through phase III HIV prevention and treatment clinical trials in the greater Durban area as the Clinical Trials Unit Principal Investigator.[6] Ramjee was concerned that the focus should not only be on clinical trials but treatment accompanied by HIV prevention education and care. In an interview she stated, “Women are the hardest hit by HIV in this region, and there is still a lot to do to address health issues in developing countries. There is a need for [a] more holistic approach to HIV prevention which should include reproductive health care for women.”[4] Ramjee was one of the first South African scientists to work on developing microbicides.[7]
She received the 2017 MRC Scientific Merit Award gold medal.[7]
As an academic, she published more than 170 articles and was both a reviewer and editor of several scientific journals.[6]

Ramjee was in London to deliver a lecture at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine on 17 March 2020, entitled 'HIV: diverse challenges among children and women in Asia and Africa'. On her return to South Africa she felt unwell and was hospitalised. She died from complications relating to COVID-19.[5]
David Mabuza, deputy president of South Africa, led the tributes calling her a "champion in the fight against the HIV epidemic." As the chairperson of the South African National AIDS Council, he stated: "The passing of Professor Ramjee comes as a huge blow to the entirety of the healthcare sector and the global fight against HIV/AIDS."[8] Salim Abdool Karim, director of the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in South Africa, praised her work for women, saying "She was involved in almost every major HIV prevention trial on microbicide … and defined her niche in developing technologies for women."[7] The president of the South African Medical Research Centre, Glenda Gray, also paid tribute to her work "She tried to address the whole ecosystem that makes women vulnerable, from the biological to the political."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gita_Ramjee

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Alfred William Frankland MBE   (19 March 1912 – 2 April 2020)[1] was a British allergist and immunologist[2] whose achievements included the popularisation of the pollen count as a piece of weather-related information to the British public, and the prediction of increased levels of allergy to penicillin. He continued to work for a number of years after turning 100.

Frankland was born in Battle, Sussex, England, to Rev. Henry Frankland, of North Yorkshire farming stock. At the time of his son's birth, he was curator of St Mark's, Little Common, near Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, in later years a vicar in Cumberland. His mother, Alice (Rose), was the daughter of Henry West, a successful ironmonger of Barnsley.[4][3] He was born an identical twin; his brother (the elder twin by fifteen minutes), Rev. John Ashlin Frankland, who worked in Sierra Leone in the 1950s,[4][5] died in 1995 at age 83. They had an elder brother, Basil, who entered the fur trade in Canada, and an elder sister, Ella, who died young (in 1933).[4][6] Frankland reports that the family doctor was ineffective, and this motivated him to do better himself.[2] His childhood was spent in the Lake District, and he attended the preparatory school at Rossall School, Carlisle Grammar School, then St Bees School.[3][4] He subsequently studied medicine at The Queen's College, Oxford and St Mary's Hospital Medical School, now part of Imperial College London.[3][2]



Frankland spent the war years 1939–45 in the Royal Army Medical Corps; initially at the Tidworth Medical Hospital, he later joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment.[7] In 1942, he was captured by the Japanese and held for three and a half years as a prisoner of war in Singapore. He would later recall: "Medically, as a prisoner of war, we saw conditions which are now unknown."[6] As a POW, he was forced to provide medical assistance for Japanese troops,[8] which Frankland believed saved his life.[9]



In 1946, Frankland began full-time work in the Allergy Department of St Mary's Hospital, London.[6] He and his colleagues undertook a series of trials of between 25,000 and 30,000 patients,[6] which proved that antihistamine tablets neither reduced nor increased the incidence of pollen asthma. Frankland has continued to contribute articles to academic journals beyond his official retirement and his 100th birthday.[2]



Frankland believed that the rise in allergies results from increased cleanliness and the levels of hygiene in modern life — the so-called hygiene hypothesis. He has said that "We don't set off our immune system early on, we are too clean. In the former East Germany for instance, with very poor work and housing conditions, people were less allergic."[6]



Frankland was keen to provide patients he saw in London with information about pollens, such as the levels of pollen on any given day, and the times of year when levels would tend to be at their highest. St. Mary's Hospital employed a botanist to assist with collecting this information, and to complement the work on pollen counts already being measured in Cardiff. Weekly London pollen counts were sent to members of the British Allergy Society from 1953 and shared publicly, via The Times and The Daily Telegraph, from 1963.[10]



He was also a supporter of the idea of desensitisation, a technique which aims to reduce the level of immune response to allergens by repeated low doses of the substance to which the patient has an allergy. In 1955, Frankland experimented on himself by being bitten each day by the blood-sucking insect Rhodnius prolixus. He was assisted in this work by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, which was able to supply insects which Frankland could be sure he had never previously been exposed to. The bites eventually provoked a severe anaphylactic reaction.[11]



This research contributed to an understanding of how long injections of allergens would need to be given to achieve desensitisation. Results varied by individual, but immunity to pollen was found on average after three years. Immunity to venom-based allergens took longer, and was found on average after five years.[6]



During the 1950s, Frankland served as an assistant to Alexander Fleming in the development of penicillin. The two had a daily meeting, but due to Fleming's lack of interest in clinical medicine, Frankland has said that he cannot recall a patient ever being discussed.[12] Frankland and Fleming were also concerned with antimicrobial resistance to penicillin, with Frankland crediting Fleming with saying that careless prescription would inadvertently lead to "the death of man."[13]



In 1954, Frankland published "Prophylaxis of summer Hay-fever and Asthma." The article reported the results of a trial involving 200 patients with previous histories of grass pollen sensitivity half treated with active vaccines, and half with inactive 'control' vaccines.[14]



The results suggested that the active vaccines were much more effective in reducing allergy symptoms than the controls. The study was notable for being the first in the field which used randomised, controlled methods and a standardised approach to every patient.[15] The trial, along with his work on the pollen count, was one of the contributing factors to Frankland being awarded the EAACI Noon Award for significant contributions to immunotherapy.[16]



In 1979 Frankland treated Iraq’s then president Saddam Hussein. Contacted to visit a VIP in Baghdad having trouble with asthma, Frankland advised Hussein this was not the case and to give up his habit of 40 cigarettes a day. Frankland has said "To my lasting regret, I told him that was his trouble and that if he carried on, in another two years he wouldn’t be head of state. I heard some time later that he had had a disagreement with his secretary of state for health, so he took him outside and shot him. Maybe I was lucky."[17][18]



Frankland retired from his job at St Mary's Hospital at 65, but was then offered an unpaid consultancy role in the Department of Medicine at Guy's Hospital. He worked at Guy's on this basis for another twenty years on peanut anaphylaxis and paediatric allergies. After retiring from Guy's he continued to participate in academic life by attending conferences and publishing articles in journals.[2]

In February 2012, Frankland appeared as an expert witness in a British court. The accused had claimed that a vehicle crash in which he was involved was caused by his losing control following a bee sting. Although Frankland agreed with the defence that such a scenario was possible, he gave an opinion that delayed-response reactions to bee stings only occurred after there had been initial symptoms following the sting. In this case there had not been such symptoms, and the accused was found guilty.[19]

In 2015, he appeared in an episode of the BBC 2 TV series Britain's Greatest Generation and as a guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.[20] At the age of 103, he was the oldest ever guest on Desert Island Discs.[10] In June 2015, at the age of 103, he was awarded an MBE for services to allergy research.[21][22] In July 2015 he was, at age 103, the oldest recipient of the badge of the Order of Mercy.[23]

Frankland continued to publish; at age 100 he authored "100 years of allergen immunotherapy",[24] and most recently co-authoring, "Flight Lieutenant Peach's observations on Burning Feet Syndrome in Far Eastern Prisoners of War 1942–45" in the journal QJM in 2016 (aged 104).[25]

In March 2020, in an interview for his 108th birthday during the coronavirus pandemic, he recounted some memories of the 1918 flu pandemic.[26] Frankland died on 2 April 2020.[1]



In 1948, Frankland was instrumental in the creation of the British Association of Allergists. The speakers at the Association's inaugural meeting included Sir Henry Dale, pharmacologist and chairman of the board at the Wellcome Trust, and Dr. John Freeman.[6] In 1962 the Association became the British Allergy Society, and Frankland served as president between 1963 and 1966. The society became the British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology (BSACI) in 1973.[6]



Frankland was a founder member (in 1970) and president.[6]



Frankland was president of the Anaphylaxis Campaign, the UK charity for severe allergy issues.[6]


The William Frankland Award for Outstanding Services in the field of Clinical Allergy is awarded each year at the annual meeting of the BSACI.[6] The allergy clinic at St Mary's Hospital is named after Frankland.[27]

[beechnut79]

Ed Farmer, long the radio voice of the Chicago White Sox, passed April 1, 2020at the age of 70. He pitched for 11 major league seasons, 2-1/2 of them with his beloved White Sox, for whom he called games for nearly 30 years. Was an advivocate for organ donations and struggled with kidney disease most of his life. Darrin Jackson, his compadre in the Sox radio booth for the last 11 seasons, referred to Mr. Farmer as a competitor who was also everyone’s best friend.

[sbarrera]

Juan Antonio Giménez López (November 16, 1943 – April 2, 2020) was an Argentine comic book artist. He was born in Mendoza, Argentina. His best known works were Heavy Metal and Métal hurlant.

Giménez died on April 3, 2020, in Mendoza of COVID-19 at the age of 76.

Biography
Giménez López was born in Mendoza, Argentina. He finished his high school education as an industrial designer and later attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Barcelona (Spain).

His first stories, for Argentine editors such as Colomba and Record, were largely inspired by Hugo Pratt (during the years he spent in Argentina) and Francisco Solano López. Back to Spain, he worked for Spanish (Zona 84, Comix International) and Italian (Lanciostory, Skorpio) magazines. His work of this period is mainly related to war and science-fiction genres.

In 1980, he designed the "Harry Canyon" segment of the film Heavy Metal. During the 1980s, he collaborated with several European magazines, including Josep Toutain's Spanish edition of 1984, the French Métal Hurlant and the Italian L'Eternauta, experimenting with graphical and narrative innovations. To this period dates what is ranked among his best series, the short science-fiction stories known under the title of Time Paradox. Also noteworthy are The City, written by Ricardo Barreiro and Le Quatrième Pouvoir (The Fourth Power), which he wrote by himself.

Giménez's style has become famous for the extreme attention he devotes to technical and historical details; his series Pik As has been defined as "a comic encyclopaedia of World War II."

Giménez also collaborated with important authors such as Carlos Trillo, Emilio Balcarce, Roberto Dal Prà, and Chilean Alejandro Jodorowsky, with whom he authored the popular Metabarons saga started in 1992.

He died on 2 April 2020 from Covid-19 having recently returned from a trip to Spain.

Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Gim%C3%A9nez

One of his better known works (among sci-fi geeks):