National Medal

PINE LAKE, Wis. -- Thomas S. Smith, who was named in 1972 to the President's Committee on the National Medal of Science, died Wednesday in his home of cancer, Lawrence University officials announced. He was 83. Mr. Smith headed Lawrence University from 1969 until his retirement in 1979. He won an appointment by then-Gov. Patrick Lucey in 1973 as chairman of the newly-created state Ethics Board. President Nixon named him to the President's Committee on the National Medal of Science, the awards selection committee for distinguished contributions in the sciences.

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J.-- Martin David Kruskal, a mathematician whose work on the properties of an unusual kind of waves helped lead to the development of fiber optic technology, died Dec. 26 in Princeton after a series of strokes. He was 81. Until his first stroke earlier last year, Dr. Kruskal remained an active scholar, colleagues said. "He was a brilliant mathematician and his contributions were extremely original," said Ovidiu Costin, a math professor at Ohio State who was a student of Dr. Kruskal's at Rutgers University.

BRYN MAWR, Pa. -- Herman Heine Goldstine, a mathematician involved in the development of the first electronic computers, died June 16 of Parkinson's disease, a funeral home said. He was 90. Mr. Goldstine persuaded the military to back the development of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC, to calculate artillery firing tables. He lobbied the Army to provide $500,000 for research carried out at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School, where the 80-foot-long computer with 18,000 vacuum tubes was created.

NEW YORK -- John Norris Bahcall, an astrophysicist who found a new way to study the sun and was a major force behind the Hubble Space Telescope, died Wednesday at age 70. The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., where Dr. Bahcall was a faculty member for 35 years, said the cause of death was a rare blood disorder. The Princeton resident, an adored and sometimes giddy mentor to younger scientists, died at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Bahcall was born in Shreveport, La., in 1934, and considered becoming a rabbi before choosing science.

CHICAGO -- Saunders Mac Lane, one of the nation's leading mathematicians and the developer of an abstract algebraic theory that has applications in fields ranging from computer science to linguistics, died April 14 in San Francisco. He was 95. In a landmark paper he co-wrote with Samuel Eilenberg in 1945, Dr. Mac Lane detailed what came to be known as the category theory. They sought to create a way to frame how different mathematic structures relate with each other and how they can predict or describe natural transformations.

PITTSBURGH -- A Pennsylvania mental health advocate and an MIT professor who both tapped difficult life experiences to help others are among this year's winners of the Heinz Award. The annual $250,000 prize is given to people who make notable contributions in five areas: the arts and humanities; the environment; the human condition; public policy; and technology, the economy, and employment. The Heinz Family Foundation of Pittsburgh has presented the award since 1994 in honor of Senator John Heinz III, heir to the Heinz food fortune who died in a 1991 plane crash.

NEW YORK -- John Norris Bahcall, an astrophysicist who found a new way to study the sun and was a major force behind the Hubble Space Telescope, died Wednesday at age 70. The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., where Dr. Bahcall was a faculty member for 35 years, said the cause of death was a rare blood disorder. The Princeton resident, an adored and sometimes giddy mentor to younger scientists, died at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Bahcall was born in Shreveport, La., in 1934, and considered becoming a rabbi before choosing...

NEW HAVEN -- Nuclear physicist D. Allan Bromley, a Yale University professor and an architect of US science policy during the first Bush administration, died Feb. 10 of a heart attack, a Yale spokeswoman said. He was 79. As top science adviser to President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1993, Mr. Bromley pushed for sizable increases in funding for research in a race to keep US manufacturing ahead of Japan and Germany. He supported the expansion of the high-speed network that became the Internet and, after questioning the science behind global warming...

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J.-- Martin David Kruskal, a mathematician whose work on the properties of an unusual kind of waves helped lead to the development of fiber optic technology, died Dec. 26 in Princeton after a series of strokes. He was 81. Until his first stroke earlier last year, Dr. Kruskal remained an active scholar, colleagues said. "He was a brilliant mathematician and his contributions were extremely original," said Ovidiu Costin, a math professor at Ohio State who was a student of Dr. Kruskal's at Rutgers University.

WASHINGTON - Call it a star party with real star power. The White House set up 20 telescopes, an inflatable dome with a three-dimensional video tour of the universe, and displays of moon rocks and meteorites as President Obama was hosting a South Lawn star party for about 150 middle schoolers last evening. It was a nearly cloudless night ideally suited for looking into the cosmos - if only the city lights were not around to obscure the best views. And if the moon, Jupiter, stars, and the entire universe were not enough, the party...

PITTSBURGH -- A Pennsylvania mental health advocate and an MIT professor who both tapped difficult life experiences to help others are among this year's winners of the Heinz Award. The annual $250,000 prize is given to people who make notable contributions in five areas: the arts and humanities; the environment; the human condition; public policy; and technology, the economy, and employment. The Heinz Family Foundation of Pittsburgh has presented the award since 1994 in honor of Senator John Heinz III, heir to the Heinz food fortune who died in a 1991 plane crash.

CHICAGO -- Saunders Mac Lane, one of the nation's leading mathematicians and the developer of an abstract algebraic theory that has applications in fields ranging from computer science to linguistics, died April 14 in San Francisco. He was 95. In a landmark paper he co-wrote with Samuel Eilenberg in 1945, Dr. Mac Lane detailed what came to be known as the category theory. They sought to create a way to frame how different mathematic structures relate with each other and how they can predict or describe natural transformations.

NEW HAVEN -- Nuclear physicist D. Allan Bromley, a Yale University professor and an architect of US science policy during the first Bush administration, died Feb. 10 of a heart attack, a Yale spokeswoman said. He was 79. As top science adviser to President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1993, Mr. Bromley pushed for sizable increases in funding for research in a race to keep US manufacturing ahead of Japan and Germany. He supported the expansion of the high-speed network that became the Internet and, after questioning the science behind global warming...

BRYN MAWR, Pa. -- Herman Heine Goldstine, a mathematician involved in the development of the first electronic computers, died June 16 of Parkinson's disease, a funeral home said. He was 90. Mr. Goldstine persuaded the military to back the development of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC, to calculate artillery firing tables. He lobbied the Army to provide $500,000 for research carried out at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School, where the 80-foot-long computer with 18,000 vacuum tubes was created.

PINE LAKE, Wis. -- Thomas S. Smith, who was named in 1972 to the President's Committee on the National Medal of Science, died Wednesday in his home of cancer, Lawrence University officials announced. He was 83. Mr. Smith headed Lawrence University from 1969 until his retirement in 1979. He won an appointment by then-Gov. Patrick Lucey in 1973 as chairman of the newly-created state Ethics Board. President Nixon named him to the President's Committee on the National Medal of Science, the awards selection committee for distinguished contributions in the sciences.

Grammy-winning folk musician Doc Watson was in critical condition Thursday at a North Carolina hospital after falling at his home in Deep Gap earlier this week. Watson's daughter, Nancy, told The Associated Press that the 89-year-old Watson fell Monday at his home. She said he didn't break any bones but that he was "real sick. " A spokeswoman at Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem said Arthel Watson — Arthel is his legal first name — was in critical condition Thursday.

NEW YORK (AP) — Helen Frankenthaler, an abstract painter known for her lyrical use of color and her stained-canvas method who led a postwar art movement that would be termed Color Field painting, has died. She was 83. Clifford Ross, Frankenthaler's nephew, says his aunt died Tuesday following a long illness at her home in Darien, Conn. One of her most famous works is ‘‘Mountains and Sea," a 1952 painting on show at the National Gallery of Art, which she created by pouring thinned paint directly onto raw, unprimed canvas laid on the studio...