Curated category
2017 deaths
- Gene CernanGene Cernan stepped off the lunar surface on the 14th of December 1972, climbed the ladder of the Apollo 17 lunar module, and has not been followed by any…
- Helmut KohlHelmut Josef Michael Kohl governed Germany for sixteen years, the longest chancellorship in the country's post-war history.
- Chuck BerryChuck Berry was buried with a cherry-red Gibson ES-355 guitar bolted to the inside lid of his coffin. That image captures something essential about the man…
- Magic AlexMagic Alex arrived in England in 1965 with a student visa and a small plastic box full of randomly blinking lights. The box had no purpose. It did nothing.
- Jerry FodorJerry Fodor walked into philosophy at a moment when the mind was considered either a black box of behavioral inputs and outputs, or a tangle of neurons best…
- Richard F. Gordon Jr.Richard Francis Gordon Jr. was born in Seattle, Washington, on the 5th of October 1929, and he died 88 years later having orbited the Moon 45 times.
- Hubert DreyfusHubert Dreyfus walked into the RAND Corporation in 1964 with a commission that seemed routine: review the latest work in artificial intelligence.
- Stanislav PetrovStanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov was alone at a command console when the Soviet Union's most sensitive nuclear early-warning system told him the world was about…
- Jeremy Noble (musicologist)Jeremy Noble entered the world on the 27th of March 1930 in London. His father James Noble descended from South African missionaries.
- Chuck BlazerCharles Gordon Blazer grew up in a middle-class Jewish family in the borough of Queens. His father ran a stationery and newspaper shop on a busy street…
- Daniel LichtDaniel Licht was born on the 13th of March 1957 in suburban Detroit. He began playing music at the age of eight with his first instrument being the clarinet.
- William BaumolWilliam Jack Baumol was born on the 26th of February 1922 in the South Bronx, to immigrant parents who had come from Eastern Europe.