Linda Lavin, the Tony Award-winning Broadway actress known also for starring as a waitress and single mom in the long-running TV sitcom “Alice,” died Dec. 29 in Los Angeles. She was 87. Between 1962 and 1973, Ms. Lavin performed I eight Broadway productions, including the lead role in Neil Simon’s “Last of the Red Hot Lovers.” On TV, “Alice” ran from 1976 to 1985 and earned Ms. Lavin two Golden Globe Awards and an Emmy [...]

Richard Foreman, the avant-garde playwright and impresario who founded the Ontological Hysteric Theater, won a bookshelf of Obie Awards, and received a MacArthur fellowship in his late 50s, died on Jan 4 in Manhattan. He was 87. Mr. Foreman established his company in 1968 and went on to present more than 50 of his own plays. The company name refers to the metaphysical study of the nature of existence and to Mr. Foreman’s conviction that [...]

Richard M. Cohen, an outspoken and award-winning television news producer whose career was eventually derailed by the ravages of multiple sclerosis, which he wrote about in a best-selling memoir, died on Dec. 24 in Westchester County. He was 76. Mr. Cohen spent more than 20 years in the news business, working with luminaries like Ted Koppel at ABC and Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather at CBS. But his memoir, Blindsided: Lifting A Life Above Illness, [...]

Seymour P. Lachman, a former New York State senator who quit the Legislature in disgust with the political shenanigans in Albany in the 1990s, and wrote two books that helped spur reforms, died on Jan. 2 at his home in Manhattan. He was 91. The book told of the corrupting power of money, the outsize influence of lobbyists, and public authorities’ lack of accountability. At his death, Mr. Lachman was director emeritus of the Hugh [...]

Shirah Neiman,  who in 1970 cracked open the glass ceiling at the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, becoming the first woman in decades to be hired into its criminal division, died on Jan. 4 in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. She was 81. Ms. Neiman first applied for a job with the Southern District in 1969. Of the 50 lawyers in the criminal division at the time, not one [...]

Martin Karplus, a Novel Prize-winning theoretical chemist who used computers to model how complex systems change during chemical reactions, a process that has led to advances in the understanding of biological processes, died on Dec. 28 at his home in Cambridge, MA. He was 94. Scientists can control the chemicals in a reaction, and they can measure and evaluate the results, but what happens inbetween is a mystery. As explained by Sven Lidin, chairman of [...]

David Schneiderman, an editor turned publisher, turned chief executive of The Village Voice, died on Jan. 17 in Edmonds, WA. He was 77. Named editor in 1978, Mr. Schneiderman elevated The Voice’s journalistic game, diversified a newsroom, and reckoned with an increasingly competitive landscape of alternative publications imitating The Voice’s cutting-edge counter-cultural tone and media coverage, and enhancing The Voice’s commitment to reporting. He resigned in 2006, worked for a corporate communications firm, Abernathy MacGregor [...]

George Kalinsky, who in contrived his way into a boxing gymnasium where Muhammad Ali was training for an upcoming fight, claiming to be a photographer for Madison Square Garden, died Jan. 16 in Manhattan. He was 88. The photos he took that day paved the way for a decades-long career as a sports photographer, for the Garden as well as for the New York Mets and Radio City Music Hall.  His photos have appeared widely [...]