Obituaries | featured news

She was only 14 when she joined her sister and a law student as an all-female underground trio of saboteurs and assassins in German-occupied Holland.

Trained as an educator, Ms. Nelson spent 40 years performing music from across the African diaspora as the leader of Women of the Calabash.

He was a New Jersey native enthralled by California. “The light had such physical presence; it looked as though you could lean against it,” he said.

What he lacked in size — he was 5 feet 9 and 175 pounds — he made up for in speed and durability, lasting 12 N.F.L. seasons and scoring 84 touchdowns.

In the 1960s, Dr. Kao outlined the potential capacity of fiber optic cables for storing information, laying the technical groundwork for modern communications.

A conservative Democrat, she replaced her husband on the ballot when he was killed in a plane crash in 1974. She went on to serve 10 terms.

He was a dirty trickster for Czechoslovakia during the Cold War. Then he defected to the West and taught the perils of propaganda to journalism students.

She and her two sisters inherited the venerable Lower East Side appetizing store Russ & Daughters, a temple of lox, herring and so much more.

Dr. DiChiera built an opera company that presented world-class talent at a time when Detroit’s population was dwindling and its future looked bleak.

Dr. Richner turned a war-ravaged pediatric hospital in Phnom Penh into a network of five medical centers that now serve one million patients a year.