As a member of Booker T. & the MG?s and as a producer, he played a pivotal role in the rise of Stax Records, a storied force in R&B in the 1960s and ?70s.

He put fellow New Jerseyans at the center of his work, and a critic praised the ?mysterious emotional tensions? in his pictures of ordinary people.

As the Kremlin?s hard-line Communist ideologist, he initially embraced his boss?s modernizing reforms before turning against them as threats to the Soviet order.

Dignitas has helped more than 3,000 people take their own lives, an act that Mr. Minelli maintained was a fundamental exercise of free will.

He emerged out of obscurity when his cargo plane was shot down while illegally ferrying arms to Nicaraguan rebels, setting off a scandal that tarnished the Reagan and Bush White Houses.

The author of novels, histories, biographies and influential political essays, he approached them all with a droll British wit and a steadfast commitment to Western values.

Influential from New Jersey to Georgia, he was part of a long tradition among Black clergy of fighting bias and getting out the vote. ?No vote, no clout,? he?d say.

A professor at Yale, he immersed himself in communities after catastrophic events like Three Mile Island, the Exxon Valdez oil spill and Hurricane Katrina.

For generations of Algerians, the fierce independence of her persona reflected their struggles in a country torn by civil war and repression.

His tales of violence and squalor in his native Ozarks had the timeless quality of fables and inspired several movies.

He spent months searching the wreckage of the World Trade Center for his son?s remains, then suffered lung illnesses attributed to toxic dust.

He was a witty and popular figure, but his racially insensitive remarks about Tiger Woods at the 1997 Masters led to death threats and many apologies.

She won two world titles and six Canadian national championships, and was also a television anchor, reporter and commentator.

Drawing comparisons to the greatest of dramatists, he entwined erudition with imagination in stage works that won accolades on both sides of the Atlantic.

Dr. Dowdle, a microbiologist who became the No. 2 official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, helped lead the nation?s response to AIDS.

Her nine volumes included ?Kyrie,? a suite of sonnets about the 1918 influenza epidemic. She was also Pulitzer Prize finalist and a poet laureate of Vermont.

Using a pinhole camera, she captured miniature landscapes that she had fashioned to resemble surreal versions of 19th-century travel photos.

He designed museums, schools and libraries before winning international acclaim late in life for 15 Central Park West in Manhattan, hailed as a rebirth of the luxury apartment building.

Often called the world?s most famous face reader, he inspired the TV show ?Lie to Me.? But some questioned his assumption that human expressions were ?pan-cultural.?

He and a partner founded Tekserve, a Manhattan emergency room for frozen hard drives, keyboards, screens and their confounded owners.

Copyright New York Times