Skip to main content

Steve Symms, senator who was voice of conservative ire, dies at 86

The staunch conservative senator from Idaho rattled the 1988 presidential campaign by falsely claiming that the wife of Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis once burned an American flag.

J. Robin Warren, who proved that bacteria cause ulcers, dies at 87
The Australian pathologist who shared a Nobel Prize for discovering that most stomach ulcers were caused by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori — and not, as had been widely believed, stress, alcohol, or spicy foods — died July 23 in Inglewood, Australia.

Steve Symms, senator who was voice of conservative ire, dies at 86
The staunch conservative senator from Idaho rattled the 1988 presidential campaign by falsely claiming that the wife of Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis once burned an American flag.

Susan Wojcicki, internet pioneer at Google, YouTube, dies at 56

Wojcicki was among Google’s longest-serving employees and one of the highest-profile female executives in Silicon Valley. Few people had greater sway over the economics of the internet in the social media era.

OBITUARY
Hall of Fame golfer and eight-time PGA winner Juan ‘Chi Chi’ Rodriguez dies at 88
He also had 22 victories on the Champions Tour from 1985-2002 and was inducted into the PGA World Golf Hall of Fame in 1992. A cause of death was not made public.

Betsaida Gutiérrez, Jamaica Plain’s voice of community and tenacity, dies at 72
“She was this great organizer who kept things easy to understand,” said Harry Smith, an activist who has lived in Jamaica Plain since 1992.

Tom Korologos, shepherd of Republican nominees, dies at 91
A onetime reporter on winter sports, he would become known for helping hundreds of presidential nominees through their Senate confirmation hearings.

Joss Naylor, the English king of racing up mountains, dies at 88
In competitions that sometimes lasted a week, he survived on sconelike cakes and black currant juice with a dash of salt and cod liver oil that he swilled from a bottle.

More Obituaries Headlines

Barbara Howar, whose hit memoir dished on D.C. society, dies at 89

Defiantly unorthodox, she wore pajamas to an embassy gala, drove an orange motorcycle through a Georgetown park, and had a barbed wit that brought her a reputation as the enfant terrible of the capital’s social scene.

MLB

Billy Bean, second openly gay ex-MLB player who later worked in commissioner’s office, dies at 60

Bean played six seasons, then joined the commissioner’s office in 2014, eventually being promoted to senior vice president for DEI.

Dr. Roman W. DeSanctis, renowned cardiologist who felt called to practice medicine, dies at 93

“He would say that as a cardiologist, it’s important to listen to the heart, but it’s much more important to listen to the patient,” said Dr. Brit Nicholson, former chief of medicine at Mass. General.

Audrey Flack, painter, sculptor and photorealist pioneer, dies at 93

Whether delving into the photorealist movement or creating massive sculptures of women, Ms. Flack spent most of her seven-decade career swimming against the art-world tide.

Walter Arlen, Holocaust refugee and belated composer, is dead at 103

The Viennese musical prodigy fled to the United States after Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938; it would be three-quarters of a century before he created musical remembrances of surviving the Holocaust and exile.

Tsung-Dao Lee, 97, physicist who challenged a law of nature, dies

Mr. Lee, a Chinese American physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1957 for overturning what had been considered a fundamental law of nature — that particles are always symmetrical — died Sunday at his home in San Francisco.

Peter Theisinger, 78, dies; led Mars rover missions for NASA

The rovers searched successfully in freezing deserts and mineral deposits for geological clues to whether the planet’s environment had supported water in ancient times. They vastly outlasted their expected length of service.

Walter Shapiro, political columnist with a contrarian streak, dies at 77

Mr. Shapiro, whose career included stints as a presidential speechwriter, stand-up comic, professor, author and, as a recent college graduate, congressional candidate, died on July 21 in Manhattan.