Obituary Events 2008
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Obituary Events 2008 Events in January 2008 Jan. 2 Sadhan C. Dutt (86), pioneer of consulting engineering services in India, in Kolkata. Jan. 6 P. K. Sethi (80) inventor of the world-famous Jaipur foot in Jaipur following cardiac arrest. Jan. 7 S. K. Agrawal (55), Director-Projects, Nuclear Power Corporation of India, the man behind the construction of all nuclear reactors in the country, of multi-organ failure in Mumbai. Jan. 15 Roger Anger (84), chief architect of the international township of Auroville, Puducherry and designer of matrimandir, in France. K. M. Adimoolam (69) renowned artist, noted for indigenisation of the Abstract Expressionist heritage at his residence in Chennai. Jan. 17 Robert James Fischer (65) American chess champion in a hospital in Iceland capital Reykjavik. Jan. 27 George Habash (81), founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palastine, of a massive heart attack in Jordan. Jan. 28 S. Thiruvenkatachari (97), eminent educationist in Chennai. Jan. 29 Gopi (71), renowned Malayalam actor, in Thiruvananthapuram. Events in February 2008 Feb. 1 Russi K. Karanjia (95), veteran journalist and former editor of Blitz at his residence in Mumbai. Feb. 5 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (91) the guru to the Beatles who introduced Transcendental Meditation to the West at his home in the Netherlands. www.bench3.com Page 1 Obituary Events 2008 Feb. 7 J. Hemachandran (76) CPI(M) leader and four-time MLA from Thiruvattar, Tamil Nadu, at a hospital in Thiruvananthapuram. Feb. 8 K. Rajaram (82), former Speaker of the Tamil Nadu Assembly, in Chennai. P. B. Ranganekar (95) veteran CPI(M) leader and freedom fighter, in Mumbai. Feb. 9 Baba Amte (93), great social worker and reformer, at his ‘commune’ for leprosy patients, ‘Anandvan’ at Warora village in Chandrapur district, Maharashtra of cancer. Feb. 11 Tom Lantos (80), U. S. Congressman instrumental in getting the Hyde Act passed in 2006, battling cancer in Bethesda, Maryland. He is the only Nazi holocaust survivor to serve in the U.S. Congress. Feb. 13 Rajendra Nath (76) popular Hindi film comedian of yesteryear at his residence in Khar, Mumbai, after prolonged illness. Feb. 19 Basavarajeshwari (86), former Union Minister who won the Bellary Lok Sabha seat three times in a row after a prolonged illness in Bellary. Feb. 20 D.G.S. Dhinakaran (72), evangelist and founder-chancellor of Karunya University at a Chennai hospital after a brief illness. Feb. 25 Justice Hans Raj Khanna (95) former judge of the Supreme Court known for his dissenting judgment in the 1976 habeas corpus case in New Delhi. Feb. 27 S. Rangarajan (73) better known as Sujatha, one of the most prolific writers of contemporary Tamil literature at a private hospital in Chennai after a brief illness. Sulochana Pattabhiraman (76), Carnatic musician and eminent musicologist in Chennai after a brief illness. Events in March 2008 www.bench3.com Page 2 Obituary Events 2008 Mar. 3 Mahema Devadoss (67), writer-artist, at her residence in Santhome, Chennai. Mar. 6 Leon Greenman (97) the only Englishman sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1943 in London. Mar. 19 Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (90), the British-born science fiction writer best known for 2001: A Space Odyssey, who had made Sri Lanka his home for the past 50 years, at a hospital in Colombo after a brief illness. V. Raghuvaran (49) Tamil actor in Chennai after a brief illness. Mar. 20 Sobhan Babu (71), veteran Telugu actor at a private hospital in Chennai following cardiac arrest. Mar. 21 Raymond Leblanc (92), the Belgian publisher behind the global rise of Tintin’s comic-book adventures penned by Georges Remi who wrote under the pseudonym Herge, in Belgium. Mar. 23 Justice K. G. Shah (73) one of the members of the Nanavati-Shah Commission probing the Godhra train carnage in Gujarat, in his Ahmedabad residence. Mar. 25 K. T. Mohammed (79) renowned Malayalam playwright in Kozhikode after prolonged illness. Events in April 2008 Apr. 5 Charlton Heston (84), Oscar-winning U.S. actor known for memorable roles in The 10 Commandments, Ben Hur at his Beverly Hills home. Apr. 10 Gopal Raju (80), founder of the first ethnic newspaper India Abroad in the U.S., after a brief illness. Apr. 19 Germaine Tillion (100), French resistance fighter and celebrated anthropologist, at her www.bench3.com Page 3 Obituary Events 2008 home in Saint-Mande, in the Paris region. Apr. 29 Albert Hofmann (102), the mystical Swiss chemist who gave the world LSD, at his home near Basel, Switzerland of heart attack. Events in May 2008 May 1 Nirmala Deshpande (79), renowned Gandhian, social activist at her residence in New Delhi. Irena Sendler (98), who saved some 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazi Holocaust during World War II, in Warsaw. Robert Rauschenberg (82), one of the foremost American artists of the 20th century at his home on Captiva Island, Florida of heart failure. May 19 Vijay Tendulkar (80), noted Marathi playwright in Pune. His Ghasiram Kotwal (Ghasiram the Constable) is billed as one of the longest-running plays in the world. May 26 Sydney Pollack (73), Hollywood producer and director of movies such as The Way We Were, Tootsie and Out of Africa, in Los Angeles of cancer. Events in June 2008 Jun. 1 Yves Saint Laurent (71), French designer who revolutionised women’s clothing in the 1960s of a brain tumour in Paris. Jun. 2 Bo Diddley (79), the rhythm and blues musician in Los Angeles. Jun. 8 Alladi Ramakrishnan (85), founder of the MATSCIENCE in Chennai, in Gainesville, Florida. Jun. 12 Gunther Stent (84), one of the first scientists to confirm the structure of DNA of pneumonia at his home in Haverford, Pennsylvania. www.bench3.com Page 4 Obituary Events 2008 Jun. 14 S. Ramachander (63), former Director of the Institute for Financial Management and Research, in Chennai after a brief illness. Jun. 17 Cyd Charisse (87), dancer and actor who rose to fame playing the vamp who entices Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain at her home in Los Angeles of heart attack. Jun. 19 Barun Sengupta (74), journalist and founding editor of the Bengali daily Bartaman in Kolkata.Jun. 24; Mallikharjuna Rao (57), a veteran of 375 Telugu movies of leukaemia at a private hospital in Hyderabad. Events in July 2008 Jul. 1 Ammannur Madhava Chakyar (92), Kodiyattom exponent at his residence Ammanur Chakyar Madom at Irinjalakuda near Thrissur, Kerala. Jul. 8 P. Ramachandran (83), veteran CPI(M) leader after a brief illness in Chennai. Jul. 11 Dr. Michael DeBakey (99) who pioneered bypass surgery and performed more than 60,000 heart surgeries during his 70-year career at Houston’s Methodist Hospital. Jul. 14 Yeshwant Vishnu Chandrachud (88), the former CJI, holding office between 1978- 85, at a hospital in Mumbai after a prolonged illness. Jul. 24 Leela Ratnam (75), former national president of the Association of Inner Wheel Clubs of India at her residence in Chennai. Events in August 2008 Aug. 1 Harkishan Singh Surjeet (92), former general secretary of the CPI(M) of a massive cardiac arrest at a hospital in Noida. Aug. 3 Alexander Solzhenitsyn (89), Nobel Prize-winning Russian author at his home on the outskirts of Moscow. www.bench3.com Page 5 Obituary Events 2008 Aug. 9 Bernie Mac (50), American comedian of complications due to pneumonia in a Chicago area hospital. Mahamud Darwish (67), Palestinian poet in a U.S. hospital from complications following open heart surgery. Aug. 10 Issac Hayes (65), symbol of soul music in the 1970s in East Memphis in the U.S. Aug. 15 C. V. Sundaram (78), former Director of the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam, after a brief illness in Chennai. Aug. 20 Hua Guofeng (87), who succeeded Mao Zedong as Chairman of China’s ruling Communist Party and briefly ruled the country, in Beijing, from an unspecified illness.. Aug. 25 Ahmed Faraz (77), revolutionary Pakistani poet in Islamabad. Aug. 27 C. R. Mitra, former director of the Birla Institute of Technology, Pilani, in New Delhi. Aug. 30 K. K. Birla (90), eminent industrialist and a Rajya Sabha MP for 18 years at his Birla Park residence in Kolkata after a brief illness. Aug. 31 Placid Rodriguez (67), renowned metallurgist and former director of IGCAR, Kalpakkam, in Chennai. Events in September 2008 Sep. 1 Thomas Bata (94), Czech-born head of the worldwide family shoe empire in Toronto, Canada. Sep. 2 H.Y. Sharada Prasad (84), media adviser to former Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi in New Delhi. after a prolonged illness. www.bench3.com Page 6 Obituary Events 2008 Sep. 8 Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan (73), violin maestro in Chennai after a brief illness. Sep. 21 Dingiri Banda Wijetunga (86), former Sri Lanka President of a chest ailment in Kandy. Sep. 26 Paul Newman (83) legendary Hollywood film actor after a long battle with cancer at his farmhouse near Westport, Connecticut K. Venkataswami (75), former Supreme Court judge who enquired into the Tehelka case in Chennai after a brief illness. Sep. 27 Mahendra Kapoor (74), noted playback singer in Mumbai after a heart attack. Sep. 29 Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi, president of Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, at his home in Himayanathnagar, Hyderabad. Sep. 30 J.B. Jeyaretnam (82), whose name was a byword for opposition in Singapore’s streamlined politics, in Singapore Events in October 2008 Oct. 1 Poornam Viswanathan (87), noted Tamil theatre personality and character artiste aafter a brief illness in Chennai. Boris Yefimov (109), Russian cartoonist in Moscow. Oct. 2 Rajendra Singh Lodha (66), renowned chartered accountant and heir to Priyamvada Birla’s Rs. 5,000 crore legacy of a heart attack in London.