December 30, 2012

2012Philip Coppens, Belgian-American journalist and author (born 1971)^[†]

Philip Coppens was a Belgian author, radio host, and commentator whose writings, speeches and television appearances focused on areas of fringe science and alternative history.

2012Beate Sirota Gordon, Austrian-American director and producer (born 1923)^[†]

Beate Sirota Gordon was an Austrian and American performing arts presenter and women's rights advocate. Born in Vienna, Austria, she moved to the Empire of Japan in 1929 with her father, the pianist Leo Sirota. After graduating from the American School in Japan, she moved to Oakland, California, where she enrolled at Mills College. Being one of the few people not of Japanese descent who was fluent in Japanese, she obtained work Office of War Information in the Foreign Broadcast Information Service of the Federal Communications Commission.

2012Rita Levi-Montalcini, Italian neurologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1909)^[†]

Rita Levi-Montalcini was an Italian neurobiologist. She was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with colleague Stanley Cohen for the discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF).

2012Carl Woese, American microbiologist and biophysicist (born 1928)^[†]

Carl Richard Woese was an American microbiologist and biophysicist. Woese is famous for defining the Archaea in 1977 through a pioneering phylogenetic taxonomy of 16S ribosomal RNA, a technique that has revolutionized microbiology. He also originated the RNA world hypothesis in 1967, although not by that name. Woese held the Stanley O. Ikenberry Chair and was professor of microbiology at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign.

2012Dennis Ferguson, Australian sex offender (born 1948)^[†]

Dennis Raymond Ferguson was an Australian sex offender convicted of child sexual abuse. In 1988, he kidnapped and sexually abused three children, and was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment. Ferguson was forced by public hostility and news media attention to relocate his residence on numerous occasions, from various locations in New South Wales and Queensland.