Charles Isaacs, 88, a comedy writer who worked with such legends as Milton Berle, Red Skelton and Bob Hope, died of cancer yesterday in Santa Monica, Calif.
He worked with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis on the pair's radio show, then went into television in 1950 as head writer for Jimmy Durante on the All Star Revue, a comedy-variety show. He was later head writer for Mr. Durante on The Colgate Comedy Hour.
Among his other TV credits were head writer for the Skelton and Dinah Shore shows and The Real McCoys, as well as creating, writing and producing the sitcoms Hey Jeannie and The Tycoon.
"I'd say Charlie was an iron man, a real workhorse," said Jordan Young, who interviewed Mr. Isaacs for his 1999 book, The Laugh Crafters. "He epitomized the comedy writer for the golden age of radio and television, the anonymous galley slave toiling day and night to put words in the mouths of famous comedians."
Ezra Solomon, 82, an economist at Stanford University whose work helped shape modern theories of corporate finance, died Dec. 9 of a heart attack, the Stanford Graduate School of Business announced Tuesday. He was 82.
Dr. Solomon's best-known book, The Theory of Financial Management, appeared in 1963, shortly after he became a professor at Stanford. It is regarded as having helped change the study of finance from a descriptive process into a more rigorous, theory-based discipline.
He served on the president's Council of Economic Advisers from 1971 to 1973, when the Nixon administration suspended the dollar's convertibility into gold and imposed an import surcharge and wage and price controls to try to recast the international financial system.
A result was the end of the so-called Bretton Woods system of fixed but adjustable exchange rates for major currencies. That system, established at the end of World War II, was eventually replaced by the present system of floating exchange rates.
Dr. Solomon was born in Rangoon, Burma, when it was a part of British India. He graduated from the University of Rangoon in 1940 and then fled the Japanese army by going to India, where he joined the Royal Navy.
In 1950, he received his doctorate from the University of Chicago. In 1956, he joined the graduate business school there as a professor of finance. He moved to Stanford in 1961. He was the author of 13 books. His wife, Janet, died last month.