Wednesday, July 9

Noteworthy

Forrest Compton, actor
Noteworthy, Profiles, United States

Forrest Compton, actor

Forrest Compton ‑ an American actor, primarily known for his roles in television – passed away on April 4, 2020 due to Covid-19. Compton was born in 1925 in Reading, Pennsylvania. His father sold aluminum pots and pans and worked at a local steel mill. After high school, Compton fought in the 103rd Infantry Division during World War II. When the war ended, Compton attended Swarthmore College, where he initially studied pre-law and political science but later switched to English. Compton also began acting school theatre productions. After graduating from Swarthmore, Compton earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Yale School of Drama, where he befriended Paul Newman. Compton was best known for portraying attorney Mike Karr, the central character on the long-running so...
Philippe Bodson, businessman & politician
Belgium, High Profilers, Noteworthy, Profiles

Philippe Bodson, businessman & politician

Philippe André Eugène, Baron Bodson, a Belgian businessman and politician who served in the Belgian Senate from 1999 to 2003, died from Covid-19 on 4 April 2020. Bodson graduated as civil engineer at the University of Liège (ULg) and obtained a Master of Business Administration at INSEAD (Fontainebleau, France) Bodson started his career at McKinsey in Paris where he worked for three years. He then worked for four years for the Daus Bank in Germany and the United States. In 1977, he started working for Glaverbel, where he would be the CEO from 1980 until 1989. From September 1989 until December 1998, he was a non-executive member of the board of directors of Fortis. From 1999 until 2003, he was a senator in the Belgian Senate for the Mouvement reformateur. F...
Arnold Demain, microbiologist
Noteworthy, Profiles, United States

Arnold Demain, microbiologist

Arnold L. Demain, an American microbiologist, succumbed to Covid-19 on April 3, 2020.   During a 60-year career, he gained a reputation in the field of industrial microbiology. He was the Professor of Industrial Microbiology in the Biology Department at MIT and Founder and Head of Department of Fermentation Microbiology at Merck & Co.   The August 2010 edition of The Journal of Antibiotics celebrated his scientific career. Demain was described as “one of the world’s leading industrial microbiologists” and as “a scientist constantly in the forefront of industrial microbiology and biotechnology.”   He was “a pioneer in research on the elucidation and regulation of the biosynthetic pathways leading to the penicilli...
Frida Wattenberg, activist
France, Noteworthy, Profiles

Frida Wattenberg, activist

Frida Wattenberg ‑ a member of the French Resistance – died on 3 April, 2020, due to COVID-19. Wattenberg was born in 1924 to Jewish parents from Poland. She grew up in The Marais quarter of Paris. She joined the Hashomer Hatzair movement in the late 1930s. During World War II, she studied at the Lycée Victor Hugo in Paris. Wattenberg also made several collages of posters for the French Resistance. In 1941, Wattenberg joined the Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE), for which she made false papers for Jewish people to escape to the south of France. Her mother was arrested during the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup in 1942, and Wattenberg managed to secure her release by proving that she worked in a factory supplying clothes to members of the German army. In 1943,...
Omar Quintana, politician
High Profilers, Noteworthy, Profiles

Omar Quintana, politician

Omar Quintana Baquerizo ‑ an Ecuadorian politician, sports executive, businessman, and member of the Ecuadorian Roldosist Party (PRE) and Institutional Renewal Party of National Action (PRIAN) political parties – died on on April 3, 2020 from coronavirus. Quintana served in the former National Congress of Ecuador from 2003 to 2005, including a tenure as the President of the National Congress from January 5, 2005, until April 20, 2005. Additionally, Quintana was the former director of C.S. Emelec, a professional football sports club based in Guayaquil. Under his leadership, C.S. Emelec won three national football championships in 1979, 2001, and 2002. He also headed the Club 9 de Octubre football club when the team qualified for the Copa Libertadores competition in 1984 an...
Henri Ecochard, military officer
France, Noteworthy, Profiles

Henri Ecochard, military officer

Henri Ecochard ‑ a French military officer who served in the Free French Forces during World War II – died on 3 April 2020 in Levallois-Perret at the age of 96 due to COVID-19. He is known for compiling a list of fighters for Free France. Ecochard was born on 24 April 1923 in Cholet. His father was a doctor based in Airvault, who was heavily pacifist due to the memory of World War I. He was interested in international relations from a young age. Ecochard attended the Lycée Descartes in Tours. An anti-fascist, he was opposed to the anti-parliamentary ideals of François de La Rocque. He was also opposed to the Munich Agreement, which allowed Adolf Hitler to annex the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. When war was finally declared in France, Ecochard raised the Fla...
Francisco Hernando Contreras, businessman
Noteworthy, Profiles, Spain

Francisco Hernando Contreras, businessman

Francisco Hernando Contreras aka Paco el Pocero ‑ a Spanish businessman in the construction industry who developed the project Seseña, promising to build 13,500 residences – died on 3 April 2020 of Covid-19. Following the collapse of the Spanish property bubble, he went to Equatorial Guinea and left his projects unfinished.
Tim Robinson, cartographer
Ireland, Noteworthy, Profiles, United Kingdom

Tim Robinson, cartographer

Timothy Drever Robinson, an English writer and cartographer, passed away on 3 April 2020after suffering from coronavirus complications. His most famous works include books about Ireland's Aran Islands  and Connemara, in the West of Ireland. He was also well known for producing exceptionally detailed maps of the Aran Islands, The Burren, and Connemara, what he called "the ABC of earth wonders". Born in England, he studied mathematics at the Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. After a career as a visual artist in Istanbul, Vienna and London, he settled in the Aran Islands, off the coast of County Galway in the 1970s, and began a detailed study of the landscape of the West Region, Ireland. Robinson produced his first map of the Aran Islands in 1975 with a se...