Marlena Spieler, an American food writer of more than 70 cookbooks, died July 6 at her home near London. She was 74.

As a food writer, she was the “Roving Feast” columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle, and also worked for radio and television shows. She received the James Beard Award, and also the International Cookbook Award in Périgueux, France, in 2000. Her Jewish Heritage Cooking book was honored in 2003 by a Special Jury Award at the World Gourmand Book Awards.

Richard Ravitch, a politically savvy, civic-minded developer who helped rescue New York City from bankruptcy and its decaying subways from fiscal collapse, died on June 25 in Manhattan. He was 89.

“Mr. Ravitch never won elective office, but he left an outsize mark on government as one of the backstage wise men recruited to stave off the financial collapse of New York’s Urban Development Corporation in 1975 and, a few months later, of New York City’s overdrawn municipal accounts,” The New York Times said. By rallying public support for inventive means of raising revenue, he was also instrumental in rejuvenating the city’s mass transit system in the 1980s as chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

He retired from the transit agency in 1983, but not from public life. He led a group of investors who restored the ailing Bowery Savings Bank to profitability in two years; was the chairman of a New York City charter revision commission that strengthened ethics and public campaign financing rules, and remained active in Jewish philanthropies.

Mr. Ravitch, who had inherited a construction company, also left his mark on the cityscape with signature apartment projects like Waterside and Manhattan Plaza.

Marvin Kitman, who survived longer as a television reviewer than most of the programs he mirthfully critiqued, died on June 29 at the Actors Fund Home in Englewood, NJ. He was 93.

He joined The New Leader as a TV critic in 1967 and began writing a syndicated column for Newsday in 1969. Over 35 years, he churned out 5,786 columns, championing groundbreaking shows like “All in the Family,” “Seinfeld,” and “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” while mercilessly panning others.

In 1982, Mr. Kitman was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. His last column was published on April 1, 2005. He also wrote a number of books, notably about Washington politics.

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 with it. Two years later, the Chia ram debuted, followed by more animals over the years, including turtles, kittens and puppies, and later, pop culture figures. There is even a Chia version of President Barack Obama.

The Clapper, a gadget that turned lights on and off when someone clapped, was released in 1985.

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 the United States.

In her lifetime, she donated $10 million to the Feminist Majority Foundation, $5 million to Ms, funding to feminist, civil rights, educational and healthcare organizations, and to individuals, including political candidates.

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 1952, he published his dissertation, “Portfolio Selection,” which overturned this common sense approach with what became known as modern portfolio theory.

The heart of his research was grounded in the relationship between risk and reward. He showed that the risk in a portfolio is less dependent on the riskiness of its component stocks and other assets than how they relate to one another. It was the first time that the benefits of diversification had been codified and quantified, using advanced mathematics to calculate correlations and variations from the mean.

Dr. Markowitz won renown in two other fields: “sparse matrix” techniques for solving large mathematical optimization problems, and the development of Simscript, which is used for programming computer simulations of systems like factories, transportation and communications networks. “I’m not a one-shot Nobel laureate,” he said in an interview with The New York Times.

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 emerging musicians. And in 1978, he started “Young Artists Showcase,” a weekly show for up-and-coming musicians. That program is still on the air.

Mr. Sherman also wrote music criticism for The New York Times, hosted a music show on public television station WNET, and collaborated with Victor Borge, the comic piano virtuoso, on two books. With his brother, Alexander, he compiled a book about their mother, Nadia Reisenberg, a concert pianist.