Deaths (Obituaries)

He published a landmark work at 32. Known for lecturing extemporaneously for hours without notes, he dazzled colleagues with the breadth of his ruminations.

Nickolas Davatzes, who was instrumental in creating the cable television networks A&E and the History Channel, which now reach into 335 million households around the world, died on Aug. 21 at his home in Wilton, Conn. He was 79.The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, his son George said.Mr. Davatzes (pronounced dah-VAT-sis) was president and…

Robert J. Zimmer, a mathematician who as president of the University of Chicago championed diversity not only quantitatively, in the recruitment of students and faculty, but also by protecting free expression on campus with a protocol that was later embraced by dozens of colleges across the country, died on Tuesday at his home in Chicago.…

Richard Robinson, who took over his father’s magazine company, Scholastic, and transformed it into a behemoth in the children’s book industry with the “Harry Potter” and “Hunger Games” series and titles like “The Magic School Bus” and “Goosebumps,” died on Saturday in Chilmark, Mass., on Martha’s Vineyard. He was 84.His son Maurice said the cause…

He was the last surviving member of the team that produced the educational cartoon for ABC-TV that informed Generation X.

As an undergraduate, he had been relatively comfortable with the foreign policies of Republicans like Senator Robert A. Taft and President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He became more critical after he entered the University of Wisconsin, where he studied under Professor Fred Harvey Harrington and where he and two other future professors, Lloyd C. Gardner and…