Died. Michael Rabin, 35, virtuoso violinist who dazzled millions of concertgoers on six continents; of a skull fracture from a fall in his Manhattan apartment. At the age of three, Rabin demonstrated that he had perfect pitch by plinking notes on the piano to correspond to any sound he heard. At 14, he made his recital debut at Carnegie Hall, launching his professional career with a flawless rendition of Wieniawski's Concerto No. 1. The next year came the first of his 84 appearances with the New York Philharmonic. The pressures of being a prodigy took their toll, and in 1963 Rabin suffered a nervous breakdown that interrupted his concert tours for two years.

Died. A.C. Spectorsky, 61, author and editor who created the more serious half of Playboy's split personality; of a stroke; on St. Croix, Virgin Islands. Playboy Publisher Hugh Hefner's tastes run to fried chicken, cool jazz and Los Angeles weekends; Auguste Comte Spectorsky preferred Continental cuisine, Mozart and Caribbean sailing. When "Spec" joined "Hef's" three-year-old enterprise in 1956, it was a slick girlie magazine in search of some intellectual balance for the bare flesh. Spectorsky provided it by attracting contributions from top fiction writers and journalists. In the process he helped drive the magazine's monthly circulation from nearly 800,000 to 6,500,000. Among his own books were The Book of the Sea (1954) and The Exurbanites (1955).

Died. John Chapman, 71, drama critic of the New York Daily News since 1943; of cancer; in Westport, Conn. The son of Poet Arthur Chapman (Out Where the West Begins), John was a photographer in Paris, a newsroom editor and a Hollywood columnist before he started reviewing Broadway productions for the News. Unabashedly proud of his nickname--"Old Frostface"--Chapman once claimed that despite the News's huge daily circulation (now more than 2,000,000), he wrote for a tiny audience: "A tough one: me."

Died. Betty Smith, 75, playwright and novelist who planted a durable oak when she published A Tree Grows in Brooklyn in 1943; in Shelton, Conn. Like Francie Nolan, Tree's heroine, Betty Smith grew up in a Brooklyn slum. After writing for and performing on the stage with modest success, she won instant fame with her first novel. Tree sold 6,000,000 copies, was made into a movie and a Broadway musical. Her three later novels, though bestsellers, were mere saplings in comparison. "I wish," she once mused, "I'd written my books in reverse."

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