Joseph Pedott, a native Chicagoan and the advertising mastermind behind the iconic ‘80s products the Clapper and the Chia Pet, died in San Francisco. He was 91. In 1980, while attending a housewares show in search of new clients, Mr. Pedott learned about a terra cotta planter, shaped like a ram, that grew chia sprouts resembling hair when watered. The inventor said it was popular but not profitable. Mr. Pedott bought the rights and tinkered [...]

Peg Yorkin, a U.S. feminist, philanthropist and strategist, who co-founded and served as chair of the board of the Feminist Majority Foundation, publisher of Ms, died June 25. She was 96. Two of her campaigns were notably successful: The Feminization of Power, which saw the increase of women in the U.S. Congress from 5% in the 1980s to 29% today, and U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of the abortion pill mifepristone and brought to [...]

Harry M. Markowitz, an economist who launched a revolution in finance, upending traditional thinking about buying stocks and earning the Nobel Prize in economic science in 1990 for his breakthrough, died on June 29 in San Diego. He was 95. Until Dr. Markowitz came along, the investment world assumed that the best stock-market strategy was simply to choose the shares of a group of companies that were thought to have the best prospects. But in [...]

Robert Sherman, who hosted three long-running radio shows over more than a half-century on the New York classical music station WQXR-FM, died June 27 at his home in Ossining, NY. He was 90. Mr. Sherman had been working behind the scenes at WQXR for more than a decade before he began hosting “Woody’s Children,” a weekly folk music program in 1969. A year later, he began “The Listening Room,” a daily program featuring established and [...]

Jack Goldstein, a preservationist who in the 1980s reacted to the razing of several venerable Broadway theaters under a Times Square redevelopment plan by helping to organize a successful campaign to give landmark status to more than two dozen other theaters, died on June 16 in Cold Spring, NY. He was 74. Part of the process was examining theaters’ interiors and exteriors to determine which should be designated landmarks, and then persuading the landmarks commission [...]

Mary Ann Hoberman, whose dozens of rhyme-filled books for children sought to encourage them to read, to read aloud, and to commit poems to memory, died on July 7 at home in Greenwich, CT. She was 92. In a 2008 interview with the Poetry Foundation, she said that moments from her childhood were reflected in her books. “I started writing when I had children of my own,” she said, “but I wasn’t really observing them [...]

Lawrence Turman, who as a novice movie producer in 1963 read about a novel by a largely unknown writer named Charles Webb, took a $1,000 option on it, and set in motion the making of the landmark film “The Graduate,” died July 1 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 96. Mr. Turman had producing or executive producing credits on more than 40 feature films and television movies, but it was “The Graduate” that [...]

Peter Nero, the concert pianist, born Bernard Nierow, who soared to popularity in the 1960s with a swinging hybrid of classics and jazz and kept the beat for nearly six decades with albums, club and television dates, and segues into conducting pops orchestras, died on July 6 in Eustis, FL. He was 89. Mr. Nero appeared with Frank Sinatra, Mel Tormé, Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis and other headliners; released 72 albums; conducted the Philly Pops [...]

Henry Kamm, a Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for The New York Times who covered Cold War diplomacy in Europe and the Soviet Union, famine in Africa, and wars and genocide in Southeast Asia, died on July 9 in Paris. He was 98. From the continent he had fled at 15 to escape Nazi persecution during WWII, to the killing fields of what was then known as Indochina, Mr. Kamm was “the consummate star of The [...]

Evelyn M. Witkin, whose discovery of the process by which DNA repairs itself opened the door to significant advances in the treatment of cancer and genetic defects, died on July 8 in Plainsboro Township, NJ. She was 102. In a career that began in the late 1940’s, early in the field of genetic research, Dr. Witkin explored the ways in which radiation both damaged DNA and generated a repair mechanism, what she came to call [...]