Architect A. Eugene Kohn, co-founder of the design firm behind some of the world’s tallest skyscrapers, died on March 9. He was 92. In a statement, Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF), whose best-known projects include New York’s One Vanderbilt and the Shanghai World Financial Center, described Kohn’s architectural legacy as “enduring...projects that have changed our cities around the world for the better.” Eugene Kohn, with William Pedersen and Sheldon Fox, established KPF in 1976 and [...]

Richard Rosenberg, a marketing whiz who transformed Bank of America into a national behemoth under his leadership, died on March 3 at his home in San Francisco. He was 92. He joined Bank of America in 1987and helped make the bank profitable again by creating new products and lines of business, like credit cards. He was named chief executive and chairman in 1990 and soon turned Bank of America into the nation’s second-largest bank through [...]

Public health advocate and Canyon Ranch founder Mel Zuckerman died March 18 at his home in Tucson, the University of Arizona announced. He was 94. Zuckerman turned his own health struggles into a strength for himself and others by founding Canyon Ranch on Tucson’s east side. Throughout his life, he worked to build the wellness resort into an iconic worldwide brand. Zuckerman has been described by his colleagues as “a visionary,” who saw years before [...]

Stuart Hodes, who danced with Martha Graham in the 1940s and ‘50s and who for the rest of his life served the field of dance as a performer, choreographer, educator, administrator and author, died on March 15 in Manhattan. He was 98. Mr. Hodes did not grow up as a dancer. When he took his first dance class, at the Martha Graham Studio in 1946, he was nearly 21 and fresh from flying B-17 bombers [...]

Gladys Kessler, a federal judge who issued a landmark ruling against the tobacco industry in 2006 — finding that cigarette makers had violated racketeering laws by conspiring to deceive the public about the deadly threat posed by smoking — died March 16 at a hospital in Washington, DC. She was 85. Judge Kessler handled cases involving detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act; the administration [...]

Norman Steinberg, a screenwriter, including the films “Blazing Saddles” and “My Favorite Year,” and the TV movie “Free to be...You and Me,” died on March 15. He was 83. A lawyer, who began practicing in Manhattan, Mr. Steinberg disliked being a lawyer, his family said. He would stop for coffee at Chock Full o’ Nuts, where he met Mel Brooks. Brooks encouraged him to try writing a script for “Get Smart.” When Brooks told him [...]

Rivka Basman Ben-Hayim, a Lithuanian-born Israeli Yiddish poet and educator, died on March 22 in Herzliya, Israel. She was 98. During WWII, she spent two years in the Vilna ghetto, after which she was sent to the Kaiserwald concentration camp in Riga. There, she started writing poetry to cheer up fellow inmates. She was liberated in 1945. In 1947, she made Aliyah and joined Kibbutz HaMa’apil. At her kibbutz, she taught children and also joined [...]