Robert Berg, 51, an acclaimed tenor saxophonist, was killed Thursday when a cement truck skidded across a snow-slicked road and rammed into his sport utility vehicle, according to police in East Hampton, N.Y.
Mr. Berg, whose career encompassed free jazz, soul jazz, jazz rock and straight-ahead playing, was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident. His wife, Arja, suffered facial lacerations and broken bones.
He was driving east on Route 27 when the cement truck approached from the opposite direction, police said. The driver of the truck swerved toward the eastbound lane to maneuver around a turning car; the slippery pavement caused the truck to slide across the road and ram into the Bergs' vehicle. The truck's driver was unhurt.
Mr. Berg, who was born in Brooklyn, began his musical career in New York City in the 1960s at the High School of Performing Arts and The Juilliard School. For more than a decade, he toured the country and recorded regularly with several bands, playing for Horace Silver and Cedar Walton among others, and developing a hard bop style that echoed such legends as John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and Wayne Shorter.
In 1984, Miles Davis invited him to join his fusion band, and after several tours, he left with the reputation as one of the more interesting tenor saxophonists on the New York music scene. Mr. Berg's solo albums include In the Shadows, Enter the Spirit, Virtual Reality and Riddles.
Sanford S. Atwood,89, the former Emory University president who stood firm behind a professor who espoused the "God is dead" theory in 1965, died Monday of a brain hemorrhage at Mission St. Joseph's Hospital in Asheville, N.C.
The president of Emory from 1963 to 1977, Mr. Atwood contended at the time that the religion professor, Thomas J.J. Altizer, "feels he has an idea worth discussing. He has the right to do so."
Mr. Atwood continued to support Mr. Altizer despite letters from alumni and United Methodist Church bishops threatening to cut off funding for the Methodist university if the professor was not fired.
"The death of God controversy really hurt us in the South and with Methodists, but it helped us nationally because of his defense of academic freedom," said Judson Ward, who was dean of faculty.
Myron Kahn, 85, who invented polarized ceiling light panels that reduced glare in schools and office buildings, died Nov. 19 of heart failure.
Born in New York, Mr. Kahn received a high school diploma at night school and enlisted in the Army Air Forces during World War II. After the war, he moved to Southern California and was inspired by a relative who had created an early version of the polarized lenses used in sunglasses. Mr. Kahn developed light-polarizing plastic ceiling panels to cut glare from fluorescent light tubes. Reducing glare allows the eye to see richer colors and greater depth, which improves overall vision.
His ceiling panels were used widely in commercial buildings constructed in the 1950s and 1960s and showcased prominently when Disneyland opened in 1955 at the now-removed Monsanto House of the Future.
More than 4,000 buildings around the world use the polarizing ceiling panels, including the United Nations Plaza Building and sections of the Library of Congress.