Stephen Sondheim, one of Broadway history’s songwriting titans, whose music and lyrics reset the artistic standard for the American stage musical, died Nov. 26 at his home in Roxbury, CT. He was 91.

An intellectually rigorous artist who perpetually sought new creative paths, Mr. Sondheim was the theater’s most revered and influential composer-lyricist of the last half of the 20th century. His work melded words and music in a way that enhanced them both, The New York Times said. From his earliest successes in the late 1950s, when he wrote the lyrics for “West Side Story” and “Gypsy,” through the 1990s, when he wrote the music and lyrics for “Assassins” and “Passion,” he was a relentlessly innovative theatrical force.

The first Broadway show for which Mr. Sondheim wrote both the words and music, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” won a Tony Award for best musical and ran for more than two years. In the 1970s and ‘80s, his most productive period, he turned out a series of strikingly original and varied works, including “Company” (1970), “Follies” (1971), “A Little Night Music” (1973), Pacific Overtures” (1976), “Sweeney Todd” (1979), “Merrily We Roll Along” (1981), “Sunday in the Park With George” (1984), and “Into the Woods” (1987).

He wrote soliloquies, conversational duets and chatty trios and quartets. For “Night Music,” he wrote two sarabands, two mazurkas, a polonaise, an etude and a gigue. Overall he wrote both the music and the lyrics for a dozen Broadway shows, plus compendium revues like “Side by Side by Sondheim,” “Putting It Together,” and the autobiographical “Sondheim on Sondheim.” Five of them won Tony Awards for best musical, and six won for best original score.

In addition to his theater work, Mr. Sondheim wrote occasional music for films. Six cast albums from his shows won Grammy Awards, and “Send In the Clowns” won the Grammy for song of the year in 1975

Dr. Zena Stein, a South African-born epidemiologist whose influential work encompassed the effects of famine on children, the health of entire communities afflicted by poverty, and the impact of the AIDS crisis on women in Africa, died on Nov. 7 at her home in Coatesville, PA. She was 99.

Dr. Stein’s research focused closely on Women’s health at a time when the bulk of scientific study spotlighted men. She was also well known for her research on child development and on mental illness. She and her husband, Dr. Mervyn Susser, worked as a team and conducted hundreds of studies, many of which shaped the field of epidemiology and community health care. Dr. Stein is listed as the author or co-author of 270 academic articles and several books.

Dr. Stein later turned her attention to the effects of the H.I.V/AIDS crisis on women, who made up a minority of patients and were often overlooked. In 1987, she co-founded the H.I.V. Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University. The center embarked on the first major effort to draw attention to women living with AIDS. It is now one of the largest centers of its kind in the world.

Noah Gordon, an American author whose novels about history, medicine and Jewish identity transformed him into a literary luminary abroad, died on Nov. 22 at his home in Dedham, MA. He was 95.

Mr. Gordon’s debut novel, The Rabbi (1965), the first of eight novels, dealt with the title character’s marriage to a minister’s daughter. It made The New York Times’s best-seller list for 26 weeks. His work has been published in 38 countries.

“Each morning, I go to my computer in anticipation of the emails I receive from readers in many countries,” Mr. Gordon wrote on his website. “I am grateful to every reader for enabling me to spend my life as a scribbler of tales.”

Sylvère Lotringer, who popularized French critical theory in the United States, helped inspire the “Matrix” movie series, hosted conferences for counterculture celebrities, lent his name to a character in an acclaimed novel (I Love Dick by Chris Kraus) and a television series based on it, provoked rants on Fox News and founded an influential publishing house — all while trying to outrun memories of a childhood spent on the precipice of antisemitic disaster — died Nov. 8 at his home outside Ensenada, Mexico, in Baja California. He was 83.

By background a Parisian Jew and by trade a tenured academic in the Columbia University French department with a specialty in abstruse philosophy, Professor Lotringer somehow charmed his way into a classically American career consisting of successive 15-minute bursts of fame, The New York Times said.

Abraham Schumer, the father of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) died Nov. 24 in a Long Island hospital after recently undergoing surgery for heart problems. He was 98.

At a news conference, Senator Schumer told the story of his own birth on Thanksgiving Day 1950. “What they used to do in those days — there was none of this spouse in the delivery room, touchy feely — they sent the husbands down to a room; they paced and smoked cigars and waited for the blessed event,” Schumer said, according to the New York Daily News. At some point, his father decided to step out of the hospital to watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade, which was happening just a few blocks away. Abraham Schumer didn’t make it back to the hospital until some five hours after the baby was actually born, “creating the first fight my parents had over me,” Schumer said. “They’ve been happily married for 72 years.”

Sylvia Weinstock, who took the art of baking to new heights with her 10-foot-tall wedding cakes and their garlands of hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of handpainted sugar flowers, died Nov. 22 at her home in Manhattan. She was 91.

Mrs. Weinstock was best known for her elaborate wedding cakes, with flowers cascading down over multiple tiers of buttercream frosting. But she also baked novelty cakes in the shape of cars or dogs or other beloved items for birthdays and other special occasions.

Her clientele included Whitney Houston, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, LeBron James, Robert De Niro, Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart, the Clintons, the Trumps, and various Kennedys and Kardashians.

Philip B. Heymann, who served four Democratic presidents over six decades, mostly in the Justice Department, and who helped prosecute major investigations including Watergate and the Abscam bribery sting operation, died Nov. 30 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 89.

Mr. Heymann served in the Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton administrations in a series of political appointments. His last role was as deputy attorney general, the second in command, in the Clinton Justice Department under Attorney General Janet Reno.

In a 2019 interview for this obituary, his daughter had asked him what he wanted to be remembered for. “He said, ‘Speaking truth to power,’” she said. “He believed in government service. And even though he held positions of consequence, he saw himself as a civil servant. He believed that we all contribute to our government.”