Dr. Aaron T. Beck, whose pragmatic, thought-monitoring psychotherapy became the centerpiece of a scientific transformation in the treatment of depression, anxiety and other related mental disorders, died Dec. 1 at his home in Philadelphia. He was 100.

Dr. Beck was a young psychiatrist trained in Freudian analysis when, in the late 1950s, he began prompting patients to focus on distortions in their day-to-day thinking, rather than on conflicts buried in childhood, as therapists typically did. He discovered that many people generated what he called “automatic thoughts,” unexamined assumptions like “I’m just unlucky in love” or “I’ve always been socially inept,” which can give rise to self-criticism and despair.

Dr. Beck found that he could undermine those assumptions, gradually improving people’s mood. His work provided the architecture for what is known as cognitive behavior therapy, which has become the world’s most extensively studied form of psychotherapy.

Muriel Lezak, a neuropsychologist who wrote a landmark textbook in the early days of her discipline that became an essential guide to the description of brain injuries and disorders, died Oct. 6 in a memory care facility in Portland, Ore. She was 94.

Dr. Lezak became interested in patients with frontal lobe damage, which affects creativity, reasoning and the ability to relate to people and to plan and organize. As she dealt with interns and other medical personnel, she realized there was no book in her evolving field that comprehensively reviewed the major disorders caused by brain dysfunction and injury, or the techniques, tests and procedures to evaluate patients. Her book, Neuropsychological Assessment, published in 1976, filled that gap.

At the VA hospital, where she worked until 1985, she started a support group to help military wives cope with the altered behavior of their brain-injured husbands. “The people they were married to were no longer there; it was somebody else who was similar, looked pretty much the same, but was no longer the person they were able to love and interact with comfortably,” she said.

As early as 1982, Dr. Lezak sounded an alarm about the effect of head injuries incurred by athletes. “A seemingly harmless blow to the head can cause a serious injury,” she said, citing soccer players in particular because they use their heads to hit the ball.

Aaron Feuerstein, a Massachusetts industrialist who became a national hero in 1995 when he refused to lay off workers at his textile plant after a catastrophic fire then spent hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild it, died Nov. 4 at a hospital in Boston. He was 95.

Mr. Feuerstein’s company Malden Mills, was by the mid 1990s among the last large textile companies in Massachusetts. Most other companies, faced with competition from lower-wage states and cheap imports, had either closed or moved production out of the state. Malden Mills was a shining exception. Then, on Dec. 11, 1995, a boiler in one of the factory’s plants exploded. Nevertheless, Mr. Feurerstein handed out holiday bonuses and announced that he would immediately reopen as much of the plant as he could, replace the buildings he had lost, and continue to pay the idled workers.

By the first weeks of January, hundreds of his employees were back at work, and just 20 months later, he opened a new $130 million complex.

Mr. Feuerstein’s father founded the Young Israel synagogue in Brookline, Mass., where his family lived. A fire there destroyed much of the building, and Mr. Feuerstein donated $1 million to rebuild it.

Rabbi Earl A. Grollman, a prolific writer on grief who became widely known for ministering to those mourning the death of loved ones in the 9/11 attacks, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and other times of loss, died Oct. 15 at his home in Belmont, MA. He was 96.

He appeared on many television programs, and he ministered to people of all faiths, encouraging frank conversations about a difficult topic.

Rabbi Grollman was the spiritual leader of Beth El Temple Center in Belmont, MA. He retired to focus on counseling and writing, producing more than two dozen books about death and grieving. “Obsessing about death can lead to paralysis, while ignoring it can squander opportunity,” he told The New York Times in 1994. “The important thing about death is the importance of life. Do what you have to do now. Live today meaningfully.”

Helene Fortunoff, who built a multimillion-dollar jewelry empire with outlets across the New York region and a flagship store on Fifth Avenue, died Nov. 8 in Miami Beach. She was 88.

Mrs. Fortunoff started her career in 1953 working at her husband Alan Fortunoff’s family business, which at the time was a small mom-and-pop enterprise selling housewares in Brooklyn. In 1957, she proposed adding a jewelry line, and she spearheaded the family’s entry into that sector. Fortunoff would become one of the largest retailers in the region. By 2003, it had six stores that specialized in fine jewelry, crystal and silver giftware.

Mrs. Fortunoff received numerous awards. She was the first recipient of the National Jeweler Award for retailing excellence. She was also the first female member of the United States Carat Club, a private group organized by De Beers. In 2006, she received the Jewelers of America Gem Award for lifetime achievement.

Bettina Grossman, an eccentric and quirky artist, holed up at the Chelsea Hotel for 50 years, died Nov. 2 at a Brooklyn Care Center. She was 94.

For much of the 1950s and ‘60s, Ms. Grossman worked as an artist in Europe. But after a series of career disappointments, she isolated herself as a permanent resident at the Chelsea, fiercely guarding her privacy and the trove of art she had produced in her prime in New York and Europe. She refused guests and kept her apartment door secured with heavy locks.

Toward the end of her life she and her work, largely abstracts and photographs, became more widely known. She was the subject of two documentary films and allowed a small circle of fellow artists to have her pieces catalogued and exhibited in shows in New York and Germany. Her work is currently on display at the MoMA in Manhattan and at MoMA PS1 in Queens.

Justus Rosenberg, whose life as a living link to Holocaust history was hidden from his students at Bard College, died Oct. 30 at his home in Rhinebeck, NY. He was 100.

As a teenager in WWII, he served as a courier in the fabled rescue team of Varian Fry, an American journalist who launched a covert operation that provided safe passage to artists and intellectuals out of Vichy France. The mission aided luminaries like Hannah Arendt, Marcel Duchamp, Marc Chagall, Max Ernst and André Breton. Mr. Rosenberg then fought in the French Resistance, lobbing grenades at German tanks, and aided the U.S. Army as a reconnaissance scout, earning a Bronze Star.

For decades, Mr. Rosenberg kept the stories of his past to himself. When he was interviewed in 1998 by the Shoah Foundation, which Steven Spielberg had established to collect the testimonies of Holocaust survivors, he discussed his wartime exploits extensively for the first time.

At the age of 96, Mr. Rosenberg was decorated by the French government as a commander of the Legion of Honor for his service in WWII. Last year, he published a memoir, The Art of Resistance: My Four Years in the French Underground.