By: Deb Chachra

Her research bore fruit in a dozen mathematical fields.

By: Brian Berger

Harpo and Groucho needed an unflappable, ersatz Italian confidence man.

By: Mark Kingwell

Theorizing in a style that must be described as cheerful despair.

By: Mark Kingwell

His was the perfect physiognomy of doomed resistance.

By: Tim Carmody

“It is not at all with ideas that one makes poetry. It is with words.”

By: Tom Nealon

Coyote wearing a giant clock, Loki with a fried chicken franchise.

By: Brian Berger

He recorded boogies of warmth, menace, sorrow and whimsy.

By: Kio Stark

She was known as a photographer of freaks; people were missing the point.

By: Brian Berger

“He was a genius at the register of the speaking voice.”

By: Tom Nealon

His Dirk Gently is insufferable, wrongheaded, and largely hopeless.

By: Tosh Berman

In a black-and-white postwar world, he was technicolor.

By: Brian Berger

His albums demonstrated traditional music’s avant-garde potential.

By: Tom Nealon

Not criminal, but criminal-minded; chronicling, yet not committing.

By: Tim Carmody

He tried to explain both new modes of being and new social structures.

By: Patrick Cates

“The thing about me is, all I’m interested in is just having a bit of a sing and a play.”