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Obituaries

By TIMES WIRES
Published June 17, 2007

Samuel Isaac Weissman, 94, a professor and chemist who helped develop the first atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project, died Tuesday (June 12, 2007), said his wife, Jane Loevinger. His work with lasers and resonant energy transfer methods at the University of California at Berkeley was cut short when he became one of the first scientists to arrive in Los Alamos, N.M., to work on the Manhattan Project during World War II. He was later intermittently active in groups working to prevent nuclear war.

Colin Fletcher, 85, who was considered the father of modern backpacking for his lyrical and practical writings on hiking, including The Complete Walker and The Man Who Walked Through Time, died Tuesday (June 12, 2007) in Monterey, Calif. "He brought this idea that you didn't have to be a nut case to take long solitary walks in the wilderness, " said Jonathan Dorn, editor-in-chief of Backpacker magazine. The Complete Walker, published in 1968, is an exhaustive guide to outdoor travel that is regarded as the backpacker's bible.

Charles Lee Remington, 85, the intellectual patriarch of modern American lepidopterology, the scientific study of butterflies and moths, died May 31 in Hamden, Conn. A professor at Yale University for more than four decades, he co-founded the field's scientific organization, the Lepidopterists' Society, while still a graduate student. Later, as a professor, he shaped the field by recruiting and serving as a mentor to several generations of the discipline's leading scientists. He also helped the discipline grow outside the walls of the academy, working with serious amateur collectors, most famously with Vladimir Nabokov.

Nellie Lutcher, 94, a singer and pianist who had a string of rhythm-and-blues hits in the late 1940s and continued performing into the early 1990s, died June 8 in Los Angeles. Her distinctively lively, lighthearted, mildly risque approach, exemplified by her original compositions He's a Real Gone Guy and Hurry on Down, earned her an international following and a booking at the New York nightclub Cafe Society. But by 1952 a more rough-hewn brand of rhythm and blues was catching on, her sales were declining and Capitol released her.

Sheila Ballantyne, 70, a novelist and short story writer whose early work explored the changing roles for women in the shifting landscape of the feminist era, died May 2 at her home in Berkeley, Calif. Her best-known book, Imaginary Crimes, was made into a feature film.

Sir Wally Herbert, 72, the first man to cross the frozen surface of the Arctic Ocean on foot, died Tuesday (June 12, 2007) in Inverness, Scotland. His grueling trip across the ice earned him a knighthood in 2000. The data collected during his 1968-69 trip across the Arctic is still used by scientists seeking to measure the melting of the northern ice cap and the effects of climate change.

Cole Kugel, 105, the oldest licensed pilot in the United States according to the Federal Aviation Administration, died Monday (June 11, 2007) in Colorado. Though his license never expired, his health certificate, which is required to fly a plane, lapsed in 2001. But he did take the controls of a small plane less than two months ago, said friend Lynn Ferguson.

[Last modified June 17, 2007, 01:01:40]