The 1970s: Science and Technology: Deaths

THE 1970s: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY: DEATHS

Georg von Békésy, 83, Hungarian-born American physicist who won the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for discoveries on stimulation within the cochlea of the ear, 13 June 1972.

Vannevar Bush, 84, electrical engineer who invented the differential analyzer, 28 June 1974.

William David Coolidge, 101, physical chemist who invented ductile tungsten, which was essential in the development of the modern incandescent lamp bulb and the X-ray tube, 3 February 1975.

Theodosius Dobzhansky, 75, Russian-American geneticist who contributed to the synthetic theory of evolution, 18 December 1975.

Vincent Du Vigneaud, 77, biochemist who won the Nobel Prize for research on pituitary hormones, 11 December 1978.

John Ray Dunning, 67, physicist whose experiments in nuclear fission helped lay the groundwork for development of the atomic bomb, 25 August 1975.

William Maurice Ewing, 67, geophysicist who established bases of plate tectonics and made early photographs and seismic studies of the ocean floor, 4 May 1974.

Kurt Godei, 71, Austrian-American mathematician who showed that the logic of any sufficiently complex logical mathematic system contains propositions that cannot be proved or disproved from within that system, 24 January 1978.

Marie Goeppert-Mayer, 65, physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb and won the Nobel Prize for physics for the shell theory, her analysis of atomic structure, 20 February 1972.

Peter Carl Goldmark, 71, physicist who developed the longplaying (LP) record and the first practical color television technology, 7 December 1977.

Samuel Abraham Goudsmit, 77, Dutchborn American physicist who discovered electron spin, 4 December 1978.

Bruce Charles Heezen, 53, oceanographer and geologist, and the first to suggest that some features of the ocean floor could be accounted for by continental drift, 21 June 1977.

Edward Calvin Kendall, 86, biochemist and winner of the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for isolating thyroxin and cortisone, 4 May 1972.

Gerard Peter Kuiper, 68, Dutchborn American astronomer who discovered moons of Neptune and Uranus and directed the Ranger space project, 23 December 1973.

Charles A. Lindbergh, 72, aviator who completed first nonstop transatlantic solo flight from New York to Paris, 26 August 1974.

Donald Howard Menzel, 75, astronomer who studied coronas of stars, planets, and nebulae and developed new theories of the structure of sunspots and solar flares, 14 December 1976.

Erwin Wilhelm Mueller, 65, physicist who developed new microscopes and studied atomic structure, 17 May 1977.

Hortense Powdermaker, 73, anthropologist who did fieldwork in Africa and the U.S. South and also studied the Hollywood film industry, 15 June 1970.

Ida Cohen Rosenthal, 87, inventor of cupped, multisize brassieres and founder of the Maiden Form Brassiere Company, 28 March 1973.

Francis Peyton Rous, 90, physician who won the Nobel Prize for medicine for his discovery that viruses can cause cancer, 16 February 1970.

Blanche Stuart Scott, 84, pioneering aviator, 12 January 1970.

Harlow Shapley, 86, astronomer who calculated the size and shape of the Milky Way galaxy and located Earth's sun at its outer edge, 20 October 1972.

Philip Edward Smith, 86, endocrinologist, 8 December 1970.

Wendell Meredith Stanley, 66, biochemist who discovered that viruses are nucleoproteins and was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry for preparing enzymes and virus proteins in pure form, 15 June 1971.

Earl Wilbur Sutherland, Jr., 58, physician and pharmacologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for research on hormonal control of human metabolism, 9 March 1974.

Edward Lawrie Tatum, 63, biochemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry for showing how genes control chemical reactions and in 1909 discovering transduction, 5 November 1975.

Wernher Magnus Maximilian von Braun, 62, German-American rocket engineer who played a major role in developing the German V-2 and American Explorer I and Saturn rockets, 16 June 1977.

George Hoyt Whipple, 97, physician who was awarded the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for the use of liver to treat pernicious anemia, 1 February 1976.

Robert Burns Woodward, 62, chemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry for synthesizing chlorophyll and other organic compounds, 8 July 1979.