William Brice (86) artist best known for grand-scale abstract paintings that suggest fragments of ancient classical ruins. The son of comedienne Fanny Brice and Jules ("Nicky") Arnstein, William Brice was an influential art teacher at UCLA from the early '50s and became an emeritus professor in 1991. He had recently taken a fall, hit his head, and never regained consciousness. He died in Los Angeles, California on March 3, 2008.

John Buttera (68) builder of hot rods and race cars whose minimalist designs and mechanical ingenuity influenced racing for decades. Buttera was credited with being the first to carve customized racing car parts out of aluminum blocks known as billets, an engineering leap that helped him to create sleeker, lighter hot rods. He died of brain cancer in Los Alamitos, California on March 2, 2008.

David Challinor (87) conservationist who combined his career as a top scientific administrator at the Smithsonian Institution with an equally intense pursuit of excellence as a champion oarsman, rowing competitively into his 80s. Challinor died of congestive heart failure in Washington, DC on March 5, 2008.

Dr. Stephen B. Colvin (64) heart surgeon who promoted the now widespread use of a pioneering procedure for repairing a leaky heart valve and performed heart surgery on children all over the world. The procedure, reconstruction rather than replacement of the mitral valve, was first performed in France in the '80s by Dr. Alain F. Carpentier. Colvin died of system failure after a recent diagnosis of multiple myeloma, in New York City on March 8, 2008.

Edward D. Goldberg (86) marine chemist at the University of California at San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography who studied the effects of ocean pollution. A member of the Scripps faculty since 1949, Goldberg helped to develop the federally funded Mussel Watch program in the '70s to measure the levels of contaminants in mussels and other shellfish that concentrate pollutants in their tissue. He died in Encinitas, California on March 7, 2008.

Malcolm C. McKenna (77) paleontologist who hunted fossils from the Rockies to the Gobi Desert, from Patagonia to the Canadian Arctic, and published an authoritative classification of mammals. McKenna broke his hip in 2007 and never really recovered from hip-replacement surgery. He died in Boulder, Colorado on March 3, 2008.

Frederick Seitz (96) renowned physicist who led both the National Academy of Sciences (1962-69) and Rockefeller University (1968-78) and became a prominent skeptic on the issue of global warming. Besides the National Medal of Science, Seitz won many other honors, including the US Department of Defense Distinguished Service Award, NASA's Distinguished Public Service Award, and the Compton Award, the highest honor of the American Institute of Physics. He died in New York City on March 2, 2008.

Joseph Weizenbaum (85) early programmer whose famed conversational computer program, ELIZA, predicted artificial intelligence. Written (1964-65) while Weizenbaum was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and named after Eliza Doolittle, the character who learned proper English in George Bernard Shaw's classic play Pygmalion and its Broadway musical version, My Fair Lady, the program ELIZA was a ground-breaking experiment in the study of human interaction with machines. Weizenbaum, who returned to his native Germany in 1996 after 60 years in the US, died of stomach cancer in Gröben, Germany on March 5, 2008.

J. Kent Clark (90) longtime English literature professor at the California Institute of Technology whose musical comedies for and about the Pasadena campus helped prize-winning scientists and studious undergraduates to take a more light-hearted view of themselves. Clark died of heart failure in Pasadena, California on March 6, 2008.

David Gale (86) University of California at Berkeley mathematician who made basic contributions to game theory and economics and was a dedicated popularizer of math. Gale's work on linear optimization is widely used in industry for routing telephone networks and scheduling work assignments, production, and transportation. He died of a heart attack in Berkeley, California on March 7, 2008.

Nader Khalili (72) architect who developed low-budget adobe housing for emergency shelter and poverty-stricken areas. Khalili founded the Cal-Earth Institute in the desert near Hesperia, where students learned how to build his dome-shaped houses. He also taught architecture at the Southern California Institute of Architecture for many years. His simplest design consisted of oblong plastic bags filled with dirt and held in place by barbed wire, a "super adobe" structure that cost under $500 to build. He died of congestive heart failure in Los Angeles, California on March 5, 2008.

Carol Barnes (63) popular British TV news reader who presented News at 10 during the '90s and became one of the ITV network's best-known faces. Barnes died days after suffering a massive stroke, in Brighton, England on March 8, 2008.

Wade Battley (52) art director who had worked on daytime soap operas, including Days of Our Lives (for which she won an Emmy), General Hospital, and the now-defunct Port Charles. Battley began her career as a stage set designer in New York and started working in TV on Showtime at the Apollo and Star Search before moving to Los Angeles in 1990. She died of cancer in Los Angeles, California on March 2, 2008.

Sofiko Chiaureli (70) Georgian film and stage actress, daughter of award-winning director Mikheil Chiaureli and famed actress Veriko Anjaparidze. Sofika Chiaureli starred in Sergei Parajanov's masterpiece The Color of Pomegranates (1968) and had appeared in five of the director's films. She died of cancer in Tbilisi, Georgia on March 2, 2008.

Giuseppe di Stefano (86) one of the greatest tenors of the 20th century and a celebrated singing partner of soprano Maria Callas. Born in Sicily, DiStefano made his debut in 1946 in the northern city of Reggio Emilia in Massenet's Manon and later sang at the world's top opera houses, including Milan's La Scala, New York's Metropolitan, and in Vienna and Berlin. His last performance was in Rome in 1992. He died while in a coma from injuries sustained in a November 2004 attack at his family's villa in Kenya, in Santa Maria Hoe, north of Milan, Italy, on March 3, 2008.

Richard J. Durrell (82) founding publisher of People magazine. Durrell's long career at Time Inc. began in 1950. He worked in advertising for Time and Life before being named publisher of People, a then-unique blend of pictures, celebrity features, and human-interest articles that hit the streets in March 1974 with actress Mia Farrow, then starring in the movie The Great Gatsby, on its first cover. It was initially a bomb among critics, but the magazine was an instant hit with readers and was turning a profit within 18 months. Durrell died of lung cancer in Fairfield, Connecticut on March 7, 2008.

Jeff Healey (41) blind Canadian rock and jazz guitarist. The Grammy-nominated Healey rose to stardom as leader of the Jeff Healey Band, a rock-oriented trio that gained international acclaim and platinum record sales with the 1988 album See the Light, which included the hit single "Angel Eyes." Healey had battled cancer since age 1, when a rare form of retinal cancer known as retinoblastoma destroyed his eyesight. He died of cancer in Toronto, Canada on March 2, 2008.

Jeffrey Hyde (55) US Army Reserve veteran who built a career in the film industry as a special effects technician. Some of Hyde's movie credits include Smokey & the Bandit, The Outsiders, Bull Durham, and Evil Dead II. He died of cancer in Forest Park, Georgia on March 5, 2008.

Jennifer McNamara (29) technical and operations staff member with the MSNBC cable news network, where she'd mostly contributed to primary night coverages. McNamara was one of two pedestrians struck and killed by a garbage truck while crossing an intersection in New York City on March 5, 2008.

Tim Miller (35) guitarist, drummer, and lead vocalist with the Wisconsin experimental death metal band Ng Kindheit who had recorded a few song demos, including "Hell to Get Along" and "Deaf Like Me." Miller died after falling down a flight of stairs at his home in Dubuque, Iowa on March 5, 2008.

Elena Nathanail (67) Greek actress who won the Best Actress award at the Thessoloniki Film Festival for her performance in Randevou Me Mia Agnosti. Nathanail appeared in over 30 films and TV shows, including Web of Deception, Assignment Skybolt, and Love Cycles. She died of lung cancer in Athens, Greece on March 4, 2008.

Paul Raymond (82) businessman whose pornography and property empire made him one of Britain's wealthiest men. Known as the King of Soho, Raymond was the founder of Raymond Revuebar, one of London's first and most famous strip clubs and a landmark in the city's entertainment district. He also published a range of glossy soft-core magazines with names like Razzle, Men Only, and Mayfair. For a time he owned a playhouse, the Whitehall Theater, staging racy farces such as Yes, We Have No Pyjamas. His death in London, England was announced on March 3, 2008.

Leonard Rosenman (83) back-to-back Oscar-winning composer honored for his work on Barry Lyndon (1975) and Bound for Glory (1976) who also wrote the scores for the legendary James Dean films East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause (both 1955). Rosenman also contributed music to at least 14 TV series, including Marcus Welby, MD and Combat! He had suffered from frontotemporal dementia in recent years and died of a heart attack in Woodland Hills, California on March 4, 2008.

Norman A. Smith (85) lead recording engineer for every Beatles song through 1965 who as a producer later helped to usher in an era of psychedelic rock when he discovered the band Pink Floyd. Smith died of cancer in East Sussex, England on March 4, 2008.

Dorothy Stone (49) award-winning composer and virtuoso flutist who in 1981 cofounded the new-music ensemble, the California EAR Unit. Stone was found dead at her home in Green Valley, California on March 7, 2008.

Malvin Wald (90) film and TV writer best known for cowriting the Oscar-nominated screenplay for the 1948 film The Naked City. Wald wrote the story for the police drama, which ended with the now-famous line, "There are 8 million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them." Wald and writer Albert Maltz, one of the '50s blacklisted Hollywood 10 who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, were credited with the screenplay. The film follows a police investigation of a murder. Filmed on location on the streets of New York, it spawned a TV series of the same title and a genre of film and TV dramas that persists today. Wald died in Sherman Oaks, California on March 6, 2008.

Ahmed al-Rubei (59) one of Kuwait's most prominent liberal politicians who fought the spread of fundamentalist Islam. A teacher of Islamic philosophy at Kuwait University, al-Rubei was a lawmaker in the '80s and '90s, held the post of the tiny Gulf country's education minister, and wrote as a columnist for local and pan-Arab dailies. A Harvard University graduate, he was an archrival of Kuwait's strong Muslim extremists who sought to impeach him as education minister in 1995 but narrowly lost. He died of brain cancer in Kuwait on March 5, 2008.

Abu Yasir al-Saudi (??) leader of the most wanted terror network al-Qaida, allegedly responsible for conducting numerous attacks against Iraqi and US forces, including the January 28 roadside bomb and gunfire attack that killed five American soldiers outside a mosque, the deadliest on US forces since six soldiers perished on January 9 in a booby-trapped house north of Baghdad. Al-Saudi was reportedly killed in a guided missile strike outside Mosul, Iraq on March 2, 2008.

Col. Ramón M. Barquín (93) Cuban Army officer whose struggles to restore the rule of law in Cuba clashed with both dictator Fulgencio Batista and later the revolutionary government of Fidel Castro. Barquín died of leukemia at his home in exile in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico on March 3, 2008.

Andrew Fisher Ensor (90) onetime US State Department official (1963-66) during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, a British-born authority on Middle Eastern oil policy who negotiated worldwide petroleum prices. After leaving government service, Ensor was based in London (1966-78) as Middle East director of what was then Mobil Oil Corp. and negotiated oil prices on behalf of the world's seven largest oil companies. At the time, petroleum cost little more than $3 a barrel. Ensor died of heart disease in Washington, DC on March 4, 2008.

David Ford (59) Indiana Republican state senator, a former prosecutor and leading legislator on technology issues. Ford was Blackford County prosecutor before being elected to the Senate in 1994. He represented District 19, which includes all or parts of Adams, Allen, Blackford, Grant, and Wells counties in northeastern Indiana. He died of pancreatic cancer in Hartford City, Indiana on March 5, 2008.

Charles A. Gillespie Jr. (72) career diplomat who opened the first American embassy in Grenada and later was ambassador to Colombia and Chile. Gillespie was a specialist in Caribbean and Latin American affairs during a 30-year career in foreign service. He was often assigned to countries in turmoil, including Grenada during the American invasion in 1983 and Colombia (1985-88) during a crackdown on cocaine trafficking, where he received daily death threats from members of the Colombian crime syndicate. He died of cancer 15 days before his 73rd birthday, in La Jolla, California on March 7, 2008.

Leonard Greenman (97) only Englishman sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Greenman was born in London in 1910 and was living in the Netherlands with his Dutch wife and 3-year-old son when it was occupied by the Nazis, who sent the family to Auschwitz in '43. His young family died there, but Greenman was freed from the Buchenwald camp in April 1945 by the US 3rd Army and dedicated his life to telling the public about the horrors of the six camps where he was held. He published a memoir, An Englishman in Auschwitz, and lectured well into old age. In 1988, he won the Order of the British Empire (OBE) from Queen Elizabeth II for his work in fighting prejudice. He died in London, England on March 7, 2008.

Lt. Gen. Robert Haldane (83) US Army officer who led the battalion that in 1966 discovered the infamous Cu Chi tunnels during the Vietnam War. Haldane died of cancer in Alexandria, Virginia on March 5, 2008.

Michael Keathley (51) commissioner of the Missouri state Office of Administration. Keathley worked as a corporate executive for 23 years, including four years as chief executive at IXL Industries, a manufacturer of tool handles. He was hired as Missouri Senate administrator in January 2002 and became Gov. Matt Blunt's administration commissioner in January '05 when Blunt took office. Keathley died of cancer in Dexter, Missouri on March 5, 2008.

Lt. Col. Donald S. Lopez (84) World War II fighter ace who became a test pilot and spacecraft engineer and had a significant role in planning the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC. Lopez died of a heart attack in Durham, North Carolina on March 3, 2008.

Donald MacDonald (94) Canadian politician who led the provincial New Democratic Party in the early '60s, standing up for civil liberties, fighting for freedom of information legislation, and working to secure permanent government funding for community health centers in Ontario. MacDonald died of heart failure in Toronto, Canada on March 8, 2008.

Lord Francis Pym (86) former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's foreign secretary during the Falklands War. Pym was defense secretary in Thatcher's first term. In 1982, he was elevated to foreign secretary during the Falkland Islands war after the resignation of Peter Carrington. Thatcher fired Pym after winning a landslide reelection in 1983, in part because he had said during the campaign that he hoped the Conservative Party would not win an overwhelming majority, and he became increasingly critical of her policies. Pym was a pro-European moderate, one of the so-called "wets" Thatcher denigrated, and a critic of the government's economic policies. But as foreign secretary, he gave crucial support during the most difficult days of Thatcher's three terms. He died in London, England on March 7, 2008.

Simon Reisman (88) Canada's chief free-trade negotiator during talks with the US in the late '80s. A tough-talking civil servant and World War II veteran, Reisman was best remembered for storming out of the Canada-US free trade negotiations and other public blowups that characterized the controversial talks. He had a pacemaker installed on Mar. 6 and died in his sleep two days later of cardiac arrest, in Ottawa, Canada on March 8, 2008.

Ann ("Tunky") Riley (72) wife of former South Carolina Gov. Dick Riley, who worked alongside her husband to improve education in the state and across the country. Ann Riley was diagnosed with breast cancer during her husband's first term in office and died of the disease in Greenville, South Carolina on March 7, 2008.

R. Palmer Baker Jr. (89) lawyer instrumental in the creation of a leading cancer research center and organizations involved in criminal justice issues and the treatment of addiction. Baker was former chairman (1995-2005) of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, a Manhattan-based organization with nine research centers in seven countries that has spent $1.2 billion on research since its founding in 1971 by Daniel K. Ludwig (d. 1992), a billionaire who made his fortune in shipping and real estate. Baker had been Ludwig's lawyer. He died moments after walking into his doctor's office on the day before his 90th birthday, in New York City on March 3, 2008.

Alburn Blake (60) Florida man who shot and killed a fire rescue officer, Rafael Vazquez (42), and seriously wounded four other customers inside a local Wendy's fast-food restaurant for unknown reasons. Vazquez was shot in the back in an apparent random shooting shortly after he had returned to the restaurant to collect a missing promotional toy for his child. Blake later shot and killed himself outside the restaurant in West Palm Beach, Florida on March 3, 2008.

Lauren Burk (18) Auburn University freshman found shot to death along a highway in Auburn, Alabama on March 4, 2008. Courtney Lockhart (23) was charged in the case with capital murder during a kidnapping, robbery, and attempted rape.

Eve Carson (22) president of the student body at the University of North Carolina. Carson was found shot to death on a street in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, about a mile from the campus, on March 5, 2008. Two men, Demario Atwater (21) and Laurence Lovette (17), were being held without bond in the case after Atwater was photographed using Carson's ATM card.

Alaa Abu Dhein (26) Palestinian citizen and former driver for the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva, a religious Jewish school, who entered the seminary and opened fire of more than 400 rounds, killing eight students and severely wounding more than 10 others, in an apparent planned anti-Semitic terror attack, possibly in retaliation for the recent assassination of Hezhollah leader Imad Mughniyeh. Abu Dhein's family had reported he was an intensely religious Muslim but not a member of any militant group and did not choose to have Israeli citizenship. He was later shot and killed by a part-time student and an Israel Defense Force officer shortly after the shootings in Jerusalem, Israel on March 6, 2008.

Anthony Escobar (13) Los Angeles boy shot and killed while picking lemons at Echo Park during an apparent gang-related shootout. This was the latest in a series of Los Angeles shootings and the fourth in a nine-day period that has victimized one or more minors. Escobar died in Los Angeles, California on March 7, 2008.

Jajuan Holmes (18) student at Mobile's Davidson High School who first fired a shot into the ceiling, then committed suicide by shooting himself in the head in front of about 150 classmates inside the school's gym court in an apparent isolated incident. No other students were injured. The school was put on lockdown for the day. Holmes was recently charged with armed robbery at a Dairy Queen restaurant, which may have been a factor leading to the shooting. He died in Mobile, Alabama on March 6, 2008.

Kaye O'Bara (80) Florida mother who pledged never to leave her then-teenage daughter's side as the girl slipped into a diabetic coma in 1970. O'Bara's story inspired best-seling author Dr. Wayne Dyer to write the book A Promise Is a Promise: An Almost Unbelievable Story of a Mother's Unconditional Love & What It Can Teach Us. The book's title came from the last exchange O'Bara had with her daughter, Edwarda, a diabetic, who caught the flu shortly before Christmas 1969. Then her condition worsened over the next few days. She was hospitalized, then later cared for by her parents at home, attracting many visitors from around the world. Kaye O'Bara had suffered for years from a cardiac condition that dated back to a heart attack in the early '80s. She died in her sleep in Miami, Florida on March 7, 2008.

Ellen Evak Paneok (48) credited as the first native female bush pilot in Alaska. Born in Bedford, Virginia, Paneok grew up in Kotzebue and Anchorage and began flying in the mid-'70s. She flew a modified Cessna 206 and specialized in landing on beaches and sandbars. She was said to have a unique knowledge of high arctic flying. She died in Anchorage, Alaska on March 2, 2008.

Rabbi Zev Segal (91) former president (1968-71) of the Rabbinical Council of America, which represents about 1,000 Orthodox rabbis in 14 countries. Segal clashed with leaders of what he called "more liberal Jewish alternatives," but also worked with Conservative and Reform Jews on social issues. His son, Nachum Segal, is host of a radio show featuring Jewish music and news on WFMU in Jersey City. Zev Segal went to the station to celebrate the show's 25th anniversary. He was found dead after the car he was driving plunged into the Hackensack River as it turned onto a dead-end street beneath the Pulaski Skyway, in Jersey City, New Jersey on March 5, 2008.

Bob Timmins (61) addiction specialist credited with salvaging the lives of a long list of celebrity drug users by steering them onto the path of sobriety and helping them to stay there. A high school dropout and a former heroin addict living on the streets, in his 20s Timmins served time in prison for armed robbery. His turning point came after his release from prison when a public defender helped him to make the right choices. In recent years Timmins battled chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). He died of respiratory failure in Marina del Rey, California on March 5, 2008.

Rafael Vazquez (42) Florida fire rescue officer. Vazquez was fatally shot in the back by Alburn Blake (60), in an apparent random shooting, shortly after he had returned to a local Wendy's fast-food restaurant to collect a missing promotional toy for his child. Blake later shot and killed himself outside the restaurant in West Palm Beach, Florida on March 3, 2008.

Roger Gill (35) Guyanese sprinter who competed in the men's 4-by-400-meter relay at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. Gill died of injuries suffered in a multiple-car accident in Brooklyn, New York on March 2, 2008.

Gary Gygax (69) cocreator in 1974 with Dave Arneson of the game Dungeons & Dragons, which helped to start the role-playing phenomenon. Using medieval characters and mythical creatures, the game known for its oddly shaped dice became a hit, particularly among teenage boys with vivid imaginations, and eventually was adapted into video games, books, and movies. Gygax had recently suffered an abdominal aneurysm. He died in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin on March 4, 2008.

Dick Martin (75) former Missouri Valley Conference commissioner (1981-85) and athletic director at the University of West Virginia. While with the Mountaineers, Martin led a drive to construct a new football stadium and hired Don Nehlen, who later became the school's winningest football coach. Martin died of cancer in Kansas City, Missouri on March 8, 2008.

Louis Olah (79) former jockey who later became famous in the thoroughbred industry among jockeys and owners whose colorful silks he cleaned for more than 40 years. Olah, who had a 22-year career as a jockey, upon retirement in 1967 took a job washing the muddied silks of jockeys who raced at Aqueduct, Belmont, and Saratoga. Keeper of the Silks or Colors Man, as he became known, Olah was in charge of 4,000 silk shirts provided for their riders by horse owners like the Phippses, the Whitneys, and the Vanderbilts. He died of heart failure in Queens, New York on March 8, 2008.

Ted Robinson (84) prolific golf course designer with numerous courses that bear his influence in the western US and in Mexico, Japan, Korea, and Indonesia. Robinson's designing career spanned 50 years, and he was credited with more than 160 projects, including his most famous work, Sahalee Country Club in Redmond, Washington, site of the 1998 PGA Championship. He died after a 10-month battle with pancreatic cancer, in Laguna Beach, California on March 2, 2008.

Jamiel Shaw (17) Los Angeles high school football standout player who rushed for more than 1,000 yards in 2007 and scored 11 touchdowns, then returned punts and kickoffs and later played defensive back. Shaw was also recognized as the Southern League's Most Valuable Player in 2007 and was an invitational All-City first-team selection. He was gunned down by two assailants in an apparent gang-related attack near his home in Los Angeles, California on March 4, 2008.

George Toley (91) former tennis coach who led the University of Southern California to 10 NCAA team titles and coached Mexico in the Davis Cup. Toley directed USC's tennis program (1954-80), coaching such stars as Stan Smith, Bob Lutz, and Dennis Ralston. He earned the nickname "Father of Tennis" in Mexico because he held a summer tennis camp for young players in the border town of Ensenada. He died in Pasadena, California on March 2, 2008.