Horton Foote on the set of "The Traveling Lady" at the Mabee Theatre at Baylor University in February 2004.
Mr. Foote, who won the Pulitzer Prize and two Academy Awards, depicted the way ordinary people shoulder the ordinary burdens of life.
Dr. Piatetski-Shapiro’s outstanding mathematical contributions came despite hardships in the Soviet Union and later the debilitating effects of Parkinson’s disease.
Mr. Cole wrote the screenplay for the 1986 film “Smooth Talk,” and the enduring play “Medal of Honor Rag,” which explored the psychological torment of a black soldier in Vietnam.
Mr. Landers was a model for advertisements of Winston cigarettes and Tiparillo cigars who contracted lung cancer and became a crusader against smoking.
Mr. Schwartz was a mathematician and computer scientist who did seminal research in fields as diverse as molecular biology and robotics.
In the 1930s and ’40s, Ms. Kool plied the lashing waters of the Bay of Fundy as the first woman in North America to be a licensed ship’s captain.
Mr. Sturdivant pitched the Yankees to a victory in Game 4 of the 1956 World Series on the day before Don Larsen’s perfect game.
Mr. Harvey captivated millions of American listeners for nearly six decades with his radio news reports and conservative commentaries, delivered nationally on weekdays in a stentorian staccato.
Mrs. Printz was a longtime answering service operator, and the inspiration for Adolph Green’s Broadway musical “Bells Are Ringing.”
Mrs. K-Doe transformed the Mother-in-Law Lounge in New Orleans into a shrine to her late husband, the rhythm and blues singer Ernie K-Doe.
Mr. Kerr was the first coach of the Chicago Bulls, and went on to spend more than 30 years as a broadcaster with the National Basketball Association team.
Mrs. Miller was the child of the Nobel laureate Dr. Albert Schweitzer and the director of the hospital that her father and mother opened in a rain forest in west central Africa.
Mr. Jorden was a former diplomatic correspondent of The New York Times who became a diplomat himself, serving as the United States ambassador to Panama.
Mr. Fehn’s talent for applying Modernist ideas to traditional Nordic forms and materials made him the most prominent Norwegian architect of the postwar era.
Mr. Martin was a nationally known graphic designer who was one of the first to modernize art museum catalogs and who simplified the cluttered look of industrial trade catalogs.
Those who passed from the scene last year included the folk singer Odetta, the actors Heath Ledger and Charlton Heston, and the writers David Foster Wallace and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
The Manhattan celebration of the life of Odetta, the folk singer who gave rhythm and voice to the civil rights era, had both a neighborly and a historical feel.
Odetta became a force of the folk music revival in the 1950s. In the 1960s her renditions of spirituals and blues became part of the soundtrack of the civil rights movement.
Those who passed from the scene so far this year, including John Updike, Andrew Wyeth and Claiborne Pell.
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For 2008, an unabashedly idiosyncratic collection of profiles of 24 very different lives, all memorably lived.
Bruce Weber answered questions about the pleasures and difficulties of covering death.
Mr. Foote on ‘Trip to Bountiful’
Photographs
The Music They Made
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