Myron Goldfinger, whose monumental modernist houses around New York made him a favorite architect of the city’s rich and powerful during the 1980s, died on July 20, in Westchester County, NY. He was 90. Mr. Goldfinger designed his houses by amassing basic shapes — half-circles, blocks, triangles —  into dramatic sculptural statements. His interiors were likewise unusual, including bridges, conversation pits, and intimate hallways that led to living rooms with double-height ceilings. “He was a [...]

Julia Silverman Scully, editor of Modern Photography magazine for 20 years, died on July 18 at her home in Manhattan. She was 94. She began working at photography magazines in the 1950s and was hired to be editor of Modern Photography in 1966. During her tenure, the magazine was instrumental in the emerging recognition of photography as art. Ms. Scully was the project director of “The Family of Woman,” a 1979 book of pictures of [...]

Mark Margolis, the prolific actor with a simmering air of menace as the fearsome former drug lord Hector Salamanca in “Breaking Bad,” died August 3 in Manhattan. He was 83. Mr. Margolis notched more than 160 credits in movies and on television, but no role made him as instantly recognizable as Hector in the critically-acclaimed series, which ran for five seasons on AMC, starting in 2008, and in its prequel, “Better Call Saul,” which ran [...]

Florence Berger, a Cornell University professor who found a second calling as a pro bono matchmaker, leading her to successfully arrange some two dozen marriages, died on July 13 at her home in Charlottesville, VA. She was 83.           Ms. Berger was a popular presence on the Cornell campus, where she became an expert in the hospitality industry, teaching courses in organizational behavior, human relations and creativity, writing three academic books, and gaining distinction as [...]

William Friedkin, a filmmaker whose gritty style and fascination with characters on the edge helped make “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist” two of the biggest box-office  hits of the 1970s, died August 7 at his home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was 87. His death came just weeks before the release of his most recent directorial effort, “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” a movie based on the Herman Wouk play. In [...]

Joan Kaplan Davidson, a preservationist and philanthropist who set projects in motion that upgraded the quality of life in New York City, died on August 11 in Hudson, NY. She was 96. Ms. Davidson served as chair of the New York State Council on the Arts in the 1970s, as New York State parks commissioner in the 1990s, and president of the J.M. Kaplan Fund from 1977 to 1993. The fund often has been the [...]

Thousands of Hasidic men converged for the funeral of the Rachmastrivka Rebbe in Borough Park, Brooklyn, on August 16. He was 92.                                                                               Getty Images

Philip L. Sherman, a mohel for 45 years, who claimed to have performed more than 26,000 ritual circumcisions, 11 in a single day including two sets of twins, died on August 9 at his home in Englewood, NJ. He was 67. He also served as a cantor at several synagogues in New York, and occasionally worked as an actor. He played a judge on the Netflix series “Orange Is the New Black” and appeared in [...]

Nechama Tec, a Holocaust survivor whose book about the Bielski partisans inspired the Daniel Craig film “Defiance,” died on August 3 in New York City. She was 92. Prior to the film adaptation of her 1993 book, Tec was best known within the academic world and the community of American Holocaust survivors. In her book and the film, Tuvia and Zus Bielski led Jewish partisans to fight the German occupiers in what is now western [...]

Jerry Moss, who with the trumpeter Herb Alpert founded A&M Records, which at its peak from the 1960s to the ’80s was an independent powerhouse behind hits by the Carpenters, the Police, Janet Jackson, Peter Frampton, and Mr. Alpert’s group, the Tijuana Brass, among many others. He died at his home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles at age 88. Built from humble beginnings in Mr. Alpert’s garage, A&M became a major force [...]