Obituaries

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An interesting, diverse trio of people who might otherwise be missed:

Wendy Beckett (25 February 1930 – 26 December 2018), better known as Sister Wendy, was a British religious sister,[1] hermit, consecrated virgin, and art historian[2] who became well known internationally during the 1990s when she presented a series of documentaries for the BBC on the history of art.[3] Her programmes, such as Sister Wendy's Odyssey and Sister Wendy's Grand Tour, often drew a 25 percent share of the British viewing audience.[4] In 1997, Sister Wendy made her US debut on public television and that same year The New York Times described her as "a sometime hermit who is fast on her way to becoming the most unlikely and famous art critic in the history of television."[1]

 More at Wikipedia


Roy Jay Glauber (September 1, 1925 – December 26, 2018) was an American theoretical physicist. He was the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics at Harvard University and Adjunct Professor of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona. Born in New York City, he was awarded one half of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence", with the other half shared by John L. Hall and Theodor W. Hänsch. In this work, published in 1963, he created a model for photodetection and explained the fundamental characteristics of different types of light, such as laser light (see coherent state) and light from light bulbs (see blackbody). His theories are widely used in the field of quantum optics.[5][6][7][8] In statistical physics he pioneered the study of the dynamics of first-order phase transitions, since he first defined and investigated the stochastic dynamics of a Ising model in a largely influential paper published in 1963.[9] He served on the National Advisory Board[10] of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, the research arms of Council for a Livable World.

One never knows the consequences of science. Quantum optics? I don't understand it, but it might be profoundly useful.  Link to Wikipedia.


Sono Osato (August 29, 1919 – December 26, 2018) was an American dancer and actress of Japanese and European descent.[1] She was notable for performing with ballet groups Ballets Russe de Monte-Carlo and the American Ballet Theatre. An actress, she starred alongside Frank Sinatra in the film The Kissing Bandit. 

Osato began her career at the age of fourteen with Wassily de Basil's Ballets Russe de Monte-Carlo, which at the time was the world's most well known ballet company; she was the youngest member of the troupe, their first American dancer and their first dancer of Japanese descent.[1][5] De Basil tried to persuade Osato to change her name to a Russian name, but she refused to do so.[3] She spent six years touring the United States, Europe, Australia and South America with the company, leaving in 1941 as she felt her career was stagnating. She went to study at the School of American Ballet in New York City for six months, then joined the American Ballet Theatre (then Ballet Theatre) as a dancer.[1][3] While at the ABT, she danced roles in such ballets as Kenneth MacMillan's Sleeping Beauty, Antony Tudor's Pillar of Fire, and Bronislava Nijinska's The Beloved.[6][7]
 

Osato in Francesca da Rimini costume, 1930s

As a musical theater performer, her Broadway credits included principal dancer in One Touch of Venus (a performance for which she received a Donaldson Award in 1943), Ivy Smith in the original On the Town, and Cocaine Lil in Ballet Ballads.[8][9]
Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Osato was encouraged to change her name to something more "American", and for a short time she used her mother's maiden name and performed as Sono Fitzpatrick.[10] At around the same time, her father was arrested and detained in Chicago under the United States government's Japanese American Internment policy.[3][11] In 1942, when the Ballet Theatre toured Mexico, Osato was unable to join the tour as Japanese Americans were barred from leaving the country, and she had several months without work. She was also unable to perform in California and other parts of the western United States when the company toured there later in the same year, as these states were deemed military areas and were off-limits for people of Japanese descent.[3]

In the late 1940s and 1950s, Osato briefly pursued a career as an actress, appearing on Broadway in Peer Gynt, in the film The Kissing Bandit with Frank Sinatra, and in occasional guest appearances on television series such as, The Adventures of Ellery Queen (1950).[10][12]

In 1980, Osato published an autobiography titled Distant Dances.[13][14] In 2006, she founded the Sono Osato Scholarship Program in Graduate Studies at Career Transition For Dancers to help former dancers finance graduate work in both the professions and the liberal arts.[15][16] In 2016, Thodos Dance Company in Chicago presented a dance production based on her life, titled Sono's Journey.[5]

More at Wikipedia.