George Palade, 95, who won a Nobel Prize in 1974 for his work isolating and identifying cell structure and helped create one of the leading cell biology programs in the nation at the University of California, San Diego, has died.
Palade died Tuesday, the university announced.
He was born in Romania, earned his medical degree there and came to the United States in 1946.
During the 1950s and ’60s, Palade took advantage of new techniques to understand the cell structure, its function and chemistry. Using those techniques, he identified the function of, among other things, mitochondria, the power plants of the cell, and ribosomes, the protein-making machinery.
Working with Albert Claude at what is now known as Rockefeller University in New York, Palade began developing ways to separate cellular components.
Palade also discovered and studied the endoplasmic reticulum, a system of folded membranes that permeates the cytoplasm of cells and provides a large surface area for chemical reactions. He showed that the endoplasmic reticulum is a vital component of all types of body cells except the mature red blood cell.
Eileen Herlie, 90, a stage and TV actress who appeared on “All My Children” for more than three decades as the motherly Myrtle Fargate, has died.
She died Wednesday of pneumonia, said Julie Hanan Carruthers, the ABC soap opera’s executive producer. The actress joined the long-running show in 1976 to play Myrtle, who became the surrogate mother to many of the soap’s major characters, including Erica Kane, portrayed by Susan Lucci. Herlie’s last appearance on the program was in June.
Richard Stephen Heyser, 81, a U-2 spy plane pilot who took the first photos of ballistic missile launch sites during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, died Monday.
Heyser, who lived in Apalachicola, Fla., died at a nursing home in nearby Port St. Joe. An Apalachicola funeral home confirmed his death.
The retired Air Force lieutenant colonel said in a 2005 interview with The Associated Press that no one was more relieved than he that the crisis ended peacefully. He said he did not want to go down in history as the man who started World War III.
