Dr. Murray Jarvik, 84, a pioneer researcher of smoking addiction and co-inventor of the nicotine patch, died May 8 at his home in Santa Monica, Calif., after a long struggle with congestive heart failure, said Mark Wheeler, a health sciences spokesman at the University of California, Los Angeles. In the early 1990s, Jarvik, a UCLA professor of psychiatry and pharmacology, and Jed Rose, then a UCLA postdoctoral fellow and currently the director of the Center for Nicotine and Smoking Cessation Research at Duke University, invented a transdermal patch that delivers nicotine directly into the body to help smokers fight the urge to light up.
Jack Gibson, 79, one of Australia's greatest rugby league coaches, died Friday after a long illness, his family said. Gibson was voted last month as Australia's rugby league coach of the century. He won five titles in Australia's top-flight competition, guiding Eastern Suburbs to back-to-back titles in 1974-1975 and Parramatta to three in a row starting in 1981. He was a keen student of other sports and spoke openly of the influence that Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi had on his techniques.
Dr. George Cressman, 88, a pioneer in the use of computers to predict the weather and a former director of the National Weather Service, died on April 19 in Rockville, Md. The immediate cause was pneumonia, said Frances Cressman, his wife, but he also had Alzheimer's disease. Under his leadership, scientists developed the first program to produce forecasts on a routine basis derived from data gathered from around the world.
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