Henry Chauncey, 97, who was credited with turning the SAT into an admission standard used by thousands of colleges and universities, died Tuesday in Shelburne, Vt.
Mr. Chauncey founded the Educational Testing Service to administer the SAT out of a belief that access to the nation's colleges should be decided through merit, rather than family connections.
A former assistant dean at Harvard University, Mr. Chauncey started Princeton, N.J.-based ETS in 1947 and served as its president until 1970. He also was a director of the New York-based College Board, the organization that sponsors the SAT.
During his tenure with ETS, higher education embraced standardized tests as a determining factor in the college admissions process. The SAT was taken by 1.3 million college-bound high school seniors in 2001.
Boris Schapiro, 93, a leading British bridge player who was implicated in an international cheating scandal, died Dec. 1 at his home in Buckinghamshire county, north of London, the English Bridge Union reported yesterday.
An engaging man with a sharp sense of humor, Mr. Schapiro was devastated when the World Bridge Federation found him guilty of cheating at the 1965 Bermuda Bowl World Championships in Buenos Aires. The American captain, John Gerber, had accused Mr. Schapiro and his partner, Terence Reese, of using finger signals to communicate to each other. Schapiro and Reese withdrew from the tournament.
The federation referred its findings to the quasi-judicial British Bridge League, which agreed there was strong evidence that the players had exchanged hand signals. But it found them not guilty of cheating because the American vice captain, Sami Kehela, considered them innocent.
In an account of the scandal in The New York Times Bridge Book, Alan Truscott, the newspaper's bridge correspondent, and his wife, Dorothy, an international player, wrote that many called the finding "a whitewash."
The World Bridge Federation suspended both players from international competitions, and Britain withdrew in protest from the 1968 World Bridge Olympiad. The men were allowed to return to competitive bridge three years later, but never played together again.
Achille Castiglioni, 84, an Italian interior designer and architect who gave new forms to domestic objects like lamps and ashtrays and helped make Italian modern design famous worldwide, died Monday in his native Milan.
The son of a sculptor, Mr. Castiglioni graduated from his hometown's Politecnico university in 1944. A few years later, he started working with his elder brothers, Livio and Pier Giacomo, researching and experimenting with new forms in industrial design.
Some of his most famous items were designed when he was working with his brothers, such as the trademark Mezzadro stool, an enameled-metal base topped by a tractor seat, and the Tojo lamp, which was made with a car headlight.
In 1997, the Museum of Modern Art in New York held an exhibit dedicated to his work. The museum houses 14 of his works.
Edgar Scherick,78, a film and television producer who helped bring Peyton Place to the small screen and collaborated with Woody Allen on his 1969 film, Take the Money and Run, died of leukemia Monday in Los Angeles.
An Army veteran who served most of his three-year stint during World War II running a weather station in Iceland, Mr. Scherick worked at an advertising agency before taking a job as a sports specialist at CBS in 1956.
He left the next year to form Sports Programs Inc., which eventually introduced Wide World of Sports to TV viewers. He became vice president in charge of ABC's programming in 1963, two years after Sports Programs merged with the network. He helped bring Batman, F-Troop, Bewitched, The Hollywood Palace and Peyton Place, the first prime-time soap opera, to ABC.