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 was a woman. During the interview process, she faced a barrage of sexist questions about her ability to work with her male counterparts and whether juries would listen to a female prosecutor. In spite of grumblings from some, she thrived in her new job, becoming the office’s expert on criminal tax law and taking the lead on several high-profile white-collar cases, eventually climbing to the deputy position under Mary Jo White, the U.S. attorney from 1993 to 2002.

“She just cared about the law,” said Jane Booth, a former head of the Southern District’s civil division, “and she knew how to get it right.”

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 the Nobel selection committee when announcing the 2013 winners in chemistry, “It’s like seeing all the actors before “Hamlet” and all the dead bodies after, and then you wonder what happened in the middle. This is what theoretical chemistry provides us with — the whole drama.”

Dr. Karplus earned a distinguished academic reputation at the nation’s top universities, and had crossed paths with some of the most important scientists of the 20th century, including Linus Pauling and J. Robert Oppenheimer. He supervised close to 250 graduate and doctoral students, most of whom have gone on to successful academic careers. They are collectively known as Karplusians.

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 Group, and retired in 2016.

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 on television, in print, and in museums. In 2019, a Kalinsky collection was accepted into the Library of Congress.

Jules Feiffer was an American Cartoonist and author, who at one time was considered the most widely read satirist in the country. He died on Jan. 26, in Richfield Springs, NY. He was 95.

He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for editorial cartooning, and in 2004, he was inducted  into the Comic Book Hall of Fame. He wrote the animated short, “Munro,” which won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1961. The Library of Congress recognized his “remarkable legacy,” from 1946 to the present, as a cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter, book author, illustrator, and art instructor.

Best known, perhaps for his work at The Village Voice, he produced the weekly comic strip titled “Feiffer” until 1997, and then appeared regularly in publications here and abroad. In 1997, he created the first op-ed-page comic strip for The New York Times, which ran monthly until 2000.

Mr. Feiffer wrote more than 35 books, plays and screenplays. In 1979, he created his first graphic novel. By 1993, he began writing and illustrating books aimed at young readers, with several of them winning awards. He began writing for the theater and film in 1961. He earned a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Dramatist’s Guild.

Mr. Feiffer said that cartoons were his first interest when young. He said that because he couldn’t write well enough to be a writer, or draw well enough to be an artist, he realized that the best way to succeed would be to combine his limited talents in each of those fields to create something unique.”

Joel Paley, a dancer, playwright and director who wrote the book and lyrics for “Ruthless!,” an award-winning Off-Broadway musical about an ambitious girls who will do anything — including murder her rival — to star in a grade school snow, died on Jan. 11 in Milford, CT. He was 69.

“Ruthless!” won the 1992 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Musical and the Drama Desk Award  for Mr. Paley’s lyrics. The musical has been performed hundreds of times around the world. When the show was revived Off-Broadway in 2015, Mr. Paley briefly stepped in to several parts to sub for ailing actors.

Jim Abrahams, who with the brothers David and Jerry Zucker arguably comprised one of the funniest trios of comedy writers in film history, died on Nov. 26 at his home in Santa Monica, CA. He was 80.

Mr. Abrahams and the Zucker brothers revolutionized film comedy with their straight-faced, fast-paced parodies of self-serious dramas like “Airplane” and “The Naked Gun.”

“We like to think of our humor as innocent,” Mr. Abrahams told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1988. There’s lots of innuendo but it’s childlike. I’d take a 7-year-old to see that. The toilet humor — they’d probably like that the best.”