Robert B. Shapiro, as former law professor turned corporate executive who performed a marketing miracle by branding aspartame as the sugar substitute NutraSweet, and making it a household name that consumers demanded in thousands of products, died on May 2 at his home in Chicago. He was 86. Aspartame was invented by chemists at the pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle. In 1985, Searle sold $700 million worth of aspartame, identified as NutraSweet, to dieters and others [...]

Jack Katz, a comic-book artist and writer, whose 768-page magnum opus, “The First Kingdom,” published in installments over a dozen years starting in 1974, was widely credited with helping give birth to the long-form graphic novel, died on April 24 in Walnut Creek, CA. He was 97. The revered comics pioneer Will Eisner once called “The First Kingdom” “...one of the most awesome undertakings in modern comic book history.” Jerry Siegel, who created Superman [...]

Margot Friedländer, a Holocaust survivor who, after decades in New York City, returned in 2010 to Berlin, where she found new purpose as a champion of Holocaust remembrance, died on May 9 in Berlin. She was 103. Mrs. Friedländer and her husband arrived in New York in 1946, vowing never to return to the country that had murdered their families. But after her husband’s death, Mrs. Friedländer decided to go back to see what was [...]

Charles Louis Strouse, an American composer and lyricist best known for writing the music to the Broadway musicals Bye Bye Birdie for which he won his first Tony Award for Best Musical,  Applause, which gave him his second Tony Award,  and Annie, his third,  died on May 15 in Manhattan, at 96. Annie, which included the song, “Tomorrow,” which quickly became a song hit and, in addition to his third Tony Award, garnered him two [...]

Peter Lax, whose work at the intersection of mathematical theory and application redefined how scientists used new computing technology to solve the technical problems of the Cold War, from designing aircraft and weapons to predicting the weather, died on May 16 at his home in Manhattan. He was 99. As the computer age was dawning, Dr. Lax, a native of Hungary, led the way in figuring out how the new technology could be harnessed to [...]

Monroe Milstein, who purchased a derelict New Jersey garment plant and turned it into the nation’s third largest discount retailer, Burlington Coat Factory, died on May 9 at his home in Bal Harbour, FL. He was 98. In 1972, he and his wife, Henrietta Milstein, ventured her savings as a Long Island teacher and transformed a former factory in Burlington, NJ, which they had bought for $675,000, into a mecca for busloads of frugal customers, [...]

Susan Brownmiller, the feminist author, journalist and activist whose book, “Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape,” helped define the modern view of rape, debunking it as an act of passion and reframing it as a crime of power and violence, died on May 24 in the Bronx. She was 90. The book, published in 1975, was translated into a dozen languages and ranked by the New York Public Library as one of the 100 [...]