Greg Hyman, an electronics wizard and toy inventor who was a creator of Tickle Me Elmo, the giggling red plush Muppet when it appeared in 1996 and became a runaway success, died on May 1 at his home in Boca Raton, FL. He was 78. Elmo was a bundle of red fluff and googly Muppet eyes. He giggled and said “That tickles.” What followed was retail mayhem. The first 400,000 sold out by Black Friday. [...]

Barney Frank, the brassy, lightning-quick-witted former Massachusetts senator, who for decades was the most prominent gay politician in the country and who was an author of the most significant overhaul of the nation’s financial regulations since the Great Depression, died on May 19 at his home in Ogunquit, Maine. He was 86. Mr. Frank, a liberal Democrat, represented a diverse suburban Boston district for 32 years, starting in 1981. A Harvard-trained lawyer, Mr. Frank “bristled [...]

Nicole Hollander, a biting cartoon artist, whose comic strip “Sylvia,” about a big-haired, cigarette-smoking, cat-loving, hyper-opinionated feminist, made her a singular voice on the funny pages for more than 30 years, died on April 23 in Chicago. She was 86. Ms. Hollander made Sylvia a tart-tongued, witty, loquacious single mother who held court — sometimes from her bathtub — on sex and relationships, politics, health care reform, the environment, and other hot-button issues. The strip [...]

Eugene Braunwald, a groundbreaking cardiologist, whose research helped transform heart disease from near-certain killer into a condition often manageable with medications procedures and careful monitoring, died on April 21 in Newton, MA. He was 96. Regarded as one of the most influential cardiologists of the 20th and early 21st centuries, Dr. Braunwald’s research reshaped how doctors understood heart attacks, heart failure, and coronary artery disease, and helped lead to therapies that saved millions of lives [...]

Abraham H. Foxman, a hidden child of the Holocaust who became the chief combatant against antisemitism in the United States as national director of the Anti-Defamation League for almost three decades, died on May 10 in Manhattan. He was 86. Mr. Foxman was born near Vilnius. When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 and seized Vilnius, eventually slaughtering 100,000 Jews, the family turned over Avraham to a nanny, Bronkislawa Kurpi. His mother [...]

Edith Eva Eger, a clinical psychologist and best-selling author whose traumatic experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps — including being forced to dance for Josef Mengele, the notorious physician known as the “Angel of Death” — enabled her to identify with and treat emotionally troubled patients, died on April 27 at her home in San Diego. She was 98. Her emotional recovery took time: For two decades after the war, she did not [...]

Seymour Bernstein, an acclaimed concert pianist, who later turned to teaching, his true calling, he said, died on April 30 in Damariscotta, Maine. He was 99. In spite of rave reviews of his public performances, Mr. Bernstein was never comfortable in the limelight. “I hated the commercial aspect,” he said. “I hated the nerves.” In the early 1950s, during the Korean War, Mr. Bernstein was drafted into the Army. Sent to Korea in the same [...]