Robert Gottlieb, an illustrious editor at Simon & Schuster, Alfred A. Knopf and The New Yorker, who shaped a library of novels, nonfiction books and magazine articles by acclaimed writers from the middle to the late 20th century, died on June 14 in Manhattan. He was 92.

Mr. Gottlieb edited novels by, among many others, John le Carré, Toni Morrison, John Cheever, Joseph Heller, Doris Lessing and Chaim Potok; science fiction by Michael Crichton and Ray Bradbury; histories by Antonia Fraser and Barbara Tuchman; memoirs by former President Bill Clinton and Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham; and works by Jessica Mitford and Anthony Burgess.

In addition to a memoir, Mr. Gottlieb wrote biographies of the actress Sarah Bernhardt and the choreographer George Balanchine, a book on the children of Charles Dickens, and articles for The New York Review of Books and many other publications.

Robert J. Zimmer, a mathematician who as president of the University of Chicago championed diversity in the recruitment of students and by protecting free expression on campus, died on May 23 at his home in Chicago. He was 75.

Mr. Zimmer, who presided over the university from 2006 to 2021, was instrumental in shepherding what became known as the Chicago Principles, a set of guidelines recommended by the Committee on Free Expression. “Concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community,” the faculty committee concluded.

Mr. Zimmer balked at the notion that unfettered free speech would jeopardize the cause of inclusion. “Inclusion into what?” Mr. Zimmer had wondered in a speech delivered in 2017. “An inferior and less challenging education? One that fails to prepare students for the challenge of different ideas and the evaluation of their own assumptions? A world in which their feelings take precedence over other matters that need to be confronted?”

For Mr. Zimmer, “that kind of education wouldn’t count,” The New York Times said.

Judge Thomas Buergenthal, who said his survival in a Nazi death camp when he was 10 years old had equipped him to become a human rights lawyer and venerable judge on the Worlds Court, died on May 29 at his home in Miami. He was 89.

After the war, he settled in the United States, and was nominated by Costa Rica for a judgeship on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, from 1979 to 1991 and was its president from 1989 to 1994.  He wrote foundational books on international law; was president of the American Bar Association’s Human Rights Committee from 1972 to 1974; dean of Washington College of Law of American University  from 1980 to 1985; held endowed professorships at the University of Texas, SUNY Buffalo and Emory University, where he was also director of the Human Rights Program of the Carter Center.

Judge Buergenthal served on the United Nations Truth Commission on El Salvador in 1992, was a member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the Ethics Commission of the International Olympic Committee, and was vice chairman of the Claims Resolution Tribunal for Dormant Accounts, which returned funds to Holocaust victims from bank accounts that had been seized by the Nazis.

Franz S. Leichter, a New York State legislator for three decades, whose progressive views on abortion, gay unions and the decriminalization of marijuana became law here, died on June 11in Manhattan, at 92.

First as an assemblyman and then as a state senator representing the Upper West Side, Mr. Leichter was regarded as one of the Legislature’s staunchest liberals. For him, that was a badge of honor, rooted in a deep sense of injustice imbued in him during his childhood in Nazi-controlled Vienna and as a young, motherless Jewish refugee in New York. His mother, Kathe Leichter, a leading Austrian sociologist who had pressed for equal pay and job opportunities for women, was imprisoned in Nazi Germany’s Ravensbrück concentration camp and killed in 1942.

Parks were a particular passion of Mr. Leichter’s. He co-wrote legislation that transformed four miles of derelict and rotting piers below West 59th Street in Manhattan into the strips of greenery and concrete piers that compose Hudson River Park. He was also a leading advocate for building a 10-block-long park atop a water treatment plant on the Hudson River, now called Riverbank State Park. Both are among his most revered achievements.

“Rick Wolff’s résumé is about as long as a Major League roster, his disparate professions inked by an adoration of sports and a fascination with sports psychology,” The New York Times said. He was a professional baseball player, a college baseball coach, an author of books about sports psychology, and an editor and publisher of books by athletes.

In the early 1990s, he became the psychological coach for the Cleveland baseball team now known as the Guardians, helping them rise from the American League basement to perennial pennant contenders. And for 25 years, he was the host of “The Sports Edge,” a show on the New York sports station WFAN dedicated to helping families navigate the increasingly competitive world of youth sports.

Rick Wolff died on April 10 at his home in Armonk, NY. He was 71.

Neville Sassienie spent his life moving between worlds, as an environmental activist, a seeker of spiritual truth, and a leader in the Jewish community. He died on June 15 in a village near London. He was 91.

An accountant by profession, his interest in personal development led him to become involved in the Landmark Forum, an organization offering training in personal and professional growth. Eventually, he became aware that “personal spirituality and collective social and environmental transformation went hand in hand,” The Guardian said.

He was active in the Jewish Board of Deputies and fought to raise awareness in the Jewish community of the need to care for the environment, leading to the launch in 2007 of the Big Green Jewish Website, which was a major influence in addressing the issue he cared so passionately about.

Sir Ben Helfgott, one of only two Holocaust survivors to compete in the Olympics, survived Buchenwald and went on to become a sporting legend. He died on June 16 in Britain. He was 93.

He was captain of the British weightlifting team at the Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1956 and in Rome in 1960. During the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Cardiff (1958), the survivor of the Buchenwald camp won a bronze medal and three gold medals in the Maccabiah Games in Israel.