2018 deaths

Willie Lee McCovey (January 10, 1938 – October 31, 2018), nicknamed "Stretch", "Mac" and "Willie Mac", was an American professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball as a first baseman from 1959 to 1980, most notably as a member of the San Francisco Giants for whom he played for 19 seasons. McCovey also played for the San Diego Padres and Oakland Athletics in the latter part of his MLB career.
He was a fearsome left-handed power hitter. At the time of his retirement in 1980, McCovey ranked second only to Babe Ruth in career home runs among left-handed batters and seventh overall. As of 2022, he ranks 20th overall on baseball's all-time home run list, tied with Ted Williams and Frank Thomas. He was a six-time All-Star, three-time home run champion, MVP, and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1986 in his first year of eligibility, only the 16th man so honored, at the time.
McCovey was known as a dead-pull line drive hitter, causing some teams to employ a shift against him. McCovey was called "the scariest hitter in baseball" by pitcher Bob Gibson, seconded by similarly feared slugger Reggie Jackson. McCovey hit 521 home runs, 231 of them in Candlestick Park, the most in that park by any player. A home run he hit on September 16, 1966, was described as the longest ever hit in that stadium.

Dennis Andrew Nilsen (23 November 1945 – 12 May 2018) was a Scottish serial killer and necrophile who murdered at least twelve young men and boys between 1978 and 1983. Convicted at the Old Bailey of six counts of murder and two of attempted murder, Nilsen was sentenced to life imprisonment on 4 November 1983, with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of 25 years; this recommendation was later changed to a whole life tariff in December 1994. In his later years, Nilsen was imprisoned at HM Prison Full Sutton in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
All of Nilsen's murders were committed at the two North London addresses where he lived between 1978 and 1983. His victims would be lured to these addresses through deception and killed by strangulation, sometimes accompanied by drowning. Following each murder, Nilsen would perform a ritual in which he bathed and dressed the victim's body, which he retained for extended periods of time, before dissecting and disposing of the remains by burning them in a bonfire or flushing them down a toilet.
Nilsen became known as the Muswell Hill Murderer, as he committed his later murders in the Muswell Hill district of North London. He died at York Hospital on 12 May 2018 of a pulmonary embolism and a retroperitoneal haemorrhage, which occurred following surgery to repair an abdominal aortic aneurysm.

Walter Darlington "Dee" Huddleston (April 15, 1926 – October 16, 2018) was an American politician. He was a Democrat from Kentucky who represented the state in the United States Senate from 1973 until 1985. He was defeated for re-election in 1984 by Mitch McConnell by 5,269 votes. Huddleston had a career in commercial broadcasting prior to entering politics.

Paul Delos Boyer (July 31, 1918 – June 2, 2018) was an American biochemist, analytical chemist, and a professor of chemistry at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). He shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for research on the "enzymatic mechanism underlying the biosynthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP)" (ATP synthase) with John E. Walker, making Boyer the first Utah-born Nobel laureate; the remainder of the Prize in that year was awarded to Danish chemist Jens Christian Skou for his discovery of the Na+/K+-ATPase.

Robert Selmer Bergland (July 22, 1928 – December 9, 2018) was an American politician. He served as a member of the House of Representatives from Minnesota's 7th congressional district from 1971 to 1977, and he served as United States Secretary of Agriculture from 1977 until 1981, during the Carter administration.

Harlan Jay Ellison (May 27, 1934 – June 28, 2018) was an American writer, known for his prolific and influential work in New Wave speculative fiction and for his outspoken, combative personality. His published works include more than 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, comic book scripts, teleplays, essays, and a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media. Some of his best-known works include the 1967 Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever", considered by some to be the single greatest episode of the Star Trek franchise (he subsequently wrote a book about the experience that includes his original teleplay), his A Boy and His Dog cycle (which was made into a film), and his short stories "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" and "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman". He was also editor and anthologist for Dangerous Visions (1967) and Again, Dangerous Visions (1972). Ellison won numerous awards, including multiple Hugos, Nebulas, and Edgars.

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (née Kroeber; KROH-bər lə GWIN; October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) was an American author best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the Earthsea fantasy series. She was first published in 1959, and her literary career spanned nearly sixty years, producing more than twenty novels and over a hundred short stories, in addition to poetry, literary criticism, translations, and children's books. Frequently described as an author of science fiction, Le Guin has also been called a "major voice in American Letters". Le Guin said she would prefer to be known as an "American novelist".Le Guin was born in Berkeley, California, to author Theodora Kroeber and anthropologist Alfred Louis Kroeber. Having earned a master's degree in French, Le Guin began doctoral studies but abandoned these after her marriage in 1953 to historian Charles Le Guin. She began writing full-time in the late 1950s and achieved major critical and commercial success with A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) and The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), which have been described by Harold Bloom as her masterpieces. For the latter volume, Le Guin won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel, becoming the first woman to do so. Several more works set in Earthsea or the Hainish universe followed; others included books set in the fictional country of Orsinia, several works for children, and many anthologies.
Cultural anthropology, Taoism, feminism, and the writings of Carl Jung all had a strong influence on Le Guin's work. Many of her stories used anthropologists or cultural observers as protagonists, and Taoist ideas about balance and equilibrium have been identified in several writings. Le Guin often subverted typical speculative fiction tropes, such as through her use of dark-skinned protagonists in Earthsea, and also used unusual stylistic or structural devices in books such as the experimental work Always Coming Home (1985). Social and political themes, including race, gender, sexuality, and coming of age were prominent in her writing. She explored alternative political structures in many stories, such as in the philosophical short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (1973) and the anarchist utopian novel The Dispossessed (1974).
Le Guin's writing was enormously influential in the field of speculative fiction, and has been the subject of intense critical attention. She received numerous accolades, including eight Hugos, six Nebulas, and twenty-four Locus Awards, and in 2003 became the second woman honored as a Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The U.S. Library of Congress named her a Living Legend in 2000, and in 2014, she won the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Le Guin influenced many other authors, including Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, David Mitchell, Neil Gaiman, and Iain Banks. After her death in 2018, critic John Clute wrote that Le Guin had "presided over American science fiction for nearly half a century", while author Michael Chabon referred to her as the "greatest American writer of her generation".

Brendan Thomas Byrne (April 1, 1924 – January 4, 2018) was an American attorney and Democratic Party politician who served as the 47th Governor of New Jersey from 1974 to 1982.
Byrne began his career as a private attorney in Newark and East Orange. In 1959, Governor Robert B. Meyner appointed Byrne to serve as Essex County Prosecutor; he served in that role until 1968. In the late 1960s, an FBI wiretap recorded local mobsters calling Byrne "the man who couldn't be bought" in reference to his high ethical standards. The publication of the comment propelled Byrne to popularity in an era when corruption was a major concern in state and national politics. He left his office as prosecutor to serve as President of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities from 1968 to 1970, then as a Superior Court judge.
In 1973, using "the man who couldn't be bought" as a campaign slogan, Byrne ran for governor of New Jersey. He won the Democratic primary with support from the powerful Hudson County political machine and carried the general election. His landslide victory, until then the largest in the state's history, was seen as a reaction against a bribery scandal in state government and the Watergate scandal.
During his first term, Byrne signed the state's first income tax, which broke a campaign promise and was initially highly unpopular across party lines. In 1977, he faced several prominent challengers for the party nomination but won the Democratic primary with a small plurality of the vote. Despite expectations he would lose the general election to Raymond Bateman, Byrne came from behind to win a second term.
During his time as governor, Byrne oversaw the opening of the first gambling casinos in Atlantic City and established the New Jersey Department of the Public Advocate. He also preserved a large majority of woodlands and wildlife areas in the state by restricting development.

Richard Roy Cole (May 6, 1926 – October 18, 2018) was an American Major League Baseball infielder.Before the 1943 season, Cole was signed as an amateur free agent by the St. Louis Cardinals. Over eight years later, he made his debut with the Cardinals, but was traded after only 15 games of service to the Pittsburgh Pirates, where he would spend the majority of his career.Cole was used at three different positions during his career, playing 169 games at shortstop, 118 games at second base, and 107 games at third.In Cole's only full season, 1954, he grounded into 20 double plays, which was enough to tie for the second highest total in the National League with Stan Musial, only being topped by Del Ennis with 23. However, Cole hit .270, along with 22 doubles, 5 triples, and 40 RBI in 138 games. The only home run of the year he hit was off the Brooklyn Dodgers' All-Star Carl Erskine.Cole died on October 18, 2018, at the age of 92.

Jørgen Dobloug (23 April 1945 – 16 January 2018) was a Norwegian artist based in Düsseldorf and Oslo.He studied at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule Basel, Switzerland (1969) in the class of Armin Hofmann and Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany (1971 – 84), in the classes of Professor Joseph Beuys, Daniel Hees and Franz Eggenschwiler. Dobloug is an important Norwegian artist, who left Norway and what be believed to be a rigid educational system for performing arts, to find his own way. Dobloug’s works have been shown in a large number of exhibitions, in Norway and abroad.His works are mainly acrylic paintings displaying either abstract motifs or heads/faces. They are humorous, partly with contradictory elements in respect of both motif, composition and colours. The works span from strict geometric paintings including grid-patterns, to playful paintings executed with a rough, almost expressive, brush. There is furthermore conceptual side to Dobloug’s project.
His works are part of international art collections as Nasjonalmuseet, Museum Kunstpalast, Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter, Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Svensk Konstfond, Tangen-Samlingen, Telenor Art Collection, Storebrand Art Collection, Christian Bjellands kunstsamling or the art collection of NSB.Dobloug was granted the Norwegian Government Grant for Artists from 1995.