Vladimir Haensel, 88, a researcher and teacher who developed the process used to produce cleaner-burning high-octane gasoline, died Sunday in Amherst, Mass. The cause of death was not reported.
Mr. Haensel was professor emeritus of chemical engineering at the University of Massachusetts, where he joined the faculty after a 42-year career as a researcher at UOP, formerly Universal Oil Products. At UOP, he developed a catalytic technique called "platforming" that produced cleaner-burning gasoline and eliminated the need to add lead to gasoline.
For his research work he was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1973, and was the first recipient of the National Academy of Sciences Award for Chemistry in Service to Society.
Judge Ellen Morphonios, 73, who prosecuted rock star Jim Morrison for allegedly exposing himself, took her pet chimpanzee to the office and was known as "Time Machine" for her long sentences, died of stomach cancer Sunday in Miami.
She also was given the nickname "Maximum" for the 1,000-year sentences she gave robbers and rapists.
Ms. Morphonios sentenced one robber to 1,197 years in prison after he urinated on the courtroom floor. She made him leave without his pants.
When another defendant's mother passed out on the floor, the judge continued with her business. "Next defendant," she said. "Step forward. Step over the body."
Before becoming a judge, she was the prosecutor in the case against Mr. Morrison, the lead singer of the Doors, after he allegedly exposed himself before 10,000 people at a 1969 concert in Miami. He was convicted the next year of indecent exposure and use of profanity, but acquitted of lewdness and public drunkenness. The guilty verdicts were appealed, but Mr. Morrison died in 1971 before the case was resolved.
Warwick Charlton, 84, who organized the construction of a replica of the Mayflower and sailed it across the Atlantic Ocean to honor the friendship between Great Britain and the United States, died of a heart attack Dec. 10 in Ringwood, near England's south coast.
Mr. Charlton, who served in North Africa during World War II, decided in 1948 to make a grand gesture thanking the United States for its help in the war. So he focused his energies on raising money to build a copy of the ship that brought the Pilgrims to Massachusetts.
The ship, built with the same kind of tools used in the 17th century, sailed in 1957. It took 55 days to cross the ocean and is still docked in Plymouth, Mass.
After returning to Great Britain, Mr. Charlton worked for many years as a newspaper and magazine editor.
Virginia McKnight Binger, 86, heiress who built her family's charitable foundation into one of the most influential grant-makers in Minnesota, died Sunday in Minneapolis.
Mrs. Binger ran the McKnight Foundation, a private philanthropy that has bestowed millions of dollars on a variety of causes, primarily in Minnesota. Her father, William L. McKnight, who spent 37 years as president and chairman of 3M Co., started the McKnight Foundation in 1953 as a tax haven for his wealth.
In 1974, a few years before his death, he handed the foundation over to his daughter. During her 14-year tenure, assets grew from less than $8 million to nearly $800 million and the organization donated $235 million to various causes. Today it has $1.6 billion in assets, ranks as the 24th-largest foundation in the United States and funds an array of programs such as scientific research, the arts and affordable housing.
For decades the Minnetonka resident also made small grants -- often to people in need whom she read about in the newspaper -- from her personal fortune, recently estimated by Forbes magazine at $770 million. She has regularly been listed among the wealthiest Americans, and until a few years ago was the wealthiest woman in Minnesota.
She and her husband, James H. Binger, former chairman of Honeywell Inc., owned an award-winning Florida racehorse farm started by her father, and five Broadway theaters in New York, one of which is named for her.
Sonny Carson, 66, a militant black activist who fought for community control of New York's public schools in the 1960s, died Friday night at a Manhattan hospital, where he had been in a coma.
Mr. Carson, who once called himself anti-white, remained an important but divisive figure in the city's black community through the 1980s, leading protests against police brutality and drugs.
The Brooklyn native was arrested on murder, attempted-murder and kidnapping charges in 1974, the same year his autobiography, The Education of Sonny Carson, was turned into a movie. Prosecutors argued he had ordered two separate shootings as acts of revenge. He was convicted of the kidnapping charge and served 15 months in prison.
Wheeler North, 80, a marine biologist who developed techniques to reforest depleted kelp beds off the Southern California coast and pioneered the use of scuba diving as a research tool, died Friday in Newport Beach, Calif.
In later years, he also researched kelp as an alternative fuel and tracked the effects on marine life of several major oil spills.
Following an El Nino condition in 1957, Mr. North and his colleagues made a breakthrough discovery when they noticed kelp forests at Point Loma and Palos Verdes in decline and hordes of sea urchins feasting on them.
After camping out on the beach for a week, diving and observing each day, Mr. North concluded that sewage being pumped into the ocean, not El Nino, supported the increase in sea urchins. He and his assistants developed a technique for hammering, or "mashing" the urchins to death, in an effort to save the kelp. The technique is still used.
His determination to preserve the kelp forests was rooted in his research, which proved they are part of a complex marine ecosystem providing food and shelter for hundreds of underwater species.
His techniques for reforestation and laboratory cultivation of kelp are now considered the standard and are among techniques used by the Marine Forests Society, a group Mr. North helped found in 1986 to replace damaged marine habitats.
Lucy Grealy, 39, author of a memoir about her experience growing up with an extreme facial disfigurement and the multiple surgeries to correct it, died Wednesday in New York City. The cause was not released.
In her 1994 memoir, Autobiography of a Face, Ms. Grealy described how surgeries to treat a rare and virulent form of cancer -- discovered in her mouth when she was 9 -- destroyed half her jaw. With treatment, she survived, and over the next 18 years underwent about 30 operations to rebuild her face.
In 1995, the book won the Whiting Award, which offers financial support to young writers of exceptional talent. In 2000, she wrote a second book, As Seen on TV, a collection of essays about her family and life.
Saul Amarel, 74, a pioneer in artificial intelligence and founder of the computer science department at Rutgers University, died of cancer Wednesday in Princeton, N.J.
Mr. Amarel was known internationally for his work in computer simulations, network synthesis and "hypercomputing," and for organizing collaborations of scientists to research artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence research explores how humans and machines process information, then applies that knowledge in designing "thinking" machines.
Born in Greece, he was a teen-ager when his family fled to Palestine in 1942. He earned an undergraduate degree in 1948 at the Institute of Technology in Haifa while participating in the fight for the creation of Israel. He later developed one of the first remote-control guided missiles for naval warfare and led projects until 1952 for the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
After earning a doctorate in engineering science at Columbia University, he led the computer theory group at RCA Sarnoff Labs in Princeton from 1958 to 1969 -- the year he founded the computer science program at Rutgers, which he led until 1984.