Hugh Bradner, 92, a physicist and oceanographer who was widely credited with inventing the protective wet suit worn by divers and surfers, died of pneumonia May 5 at his home in San Diego. Bradner contributed to the development of nuclear weapons and was part of a small group of scientists selected by J. Robert Oppenheimer to set up the Los Alamos atom bomb laboratory in New Mexico.
John Phillip Law, 70, the strikingly handsome 1960s movie actor who played an angel in the futuristic "Barbarella" and a lovesick Russian seaman in "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming," died Tuesday at his Los Angeles home, said his daughter Dawn Law. The cause of death was not given.
Zelia Gattai, 91, the celebrated author of the Brazilian bestseller "Anarchists, Thank God!" and widow of famed Brazilian novelist Jorge Amado, died Saturday. Gattai was hospitalized for weeks in Salvador, the northeastern Brazilian city immortalized in Amado's novels.
Jeff Torrington, 72, a Scottish writer who labored 30 years on an award-winning first novel based on his own hard life, died May 11. He died at Dykebar Hospital in Paisley, Scotland, his family said. The cause of death was not announced, but he had suffered from Parkinson's disease. Torrington's novel "Swing Hammer Swing!" won two Whitbread Awards in 1992, for best first novel and book of the year.
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