Died. Pierre Blaise, 20, French peasant woodcutter who starred in Louis Malle's provocative 1974 film Lacombe, Lucien; in a car crash along with two companions; near Montauban, France. Blaise, who had never acted before, bested 1,000 others who had tried out for the role of the squarejawed, peach-cheeked farm boy, Lucien Lacombe. Blaise had then starred in three other films, most recently the unreleased Par des Escaliers Anciens (By Way of the Old Staircase) with Marcello Mastroianni.

qed

Died. Marshall Kay, 70, Columbia University geologist and early proponent of the theory of continental drift; in Englewood, N.J. Kay's reconstruction of continental movements in 1948 showed that the boundaries of North America were delineated over 400 million years ago by undersea volcanic upheaval. He also predicted that Japan would one day merge with the Asian mainland. An organizer of the 1967 Gander conference on continental drift, Kay was honored with the Geological Society of America's top award in 1971.

qed

Died. Enrico Josi, 90, world-renowned archaeologist; in Rome. A professor at Rome's Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology from 1925 to 1970, Josi took part in dozens of digs through Italy's catacombs and ancient graveyards in search of relics of early Christianity, most notably the 1939 excavation beneath the Vatican Basilica, in which the tomb of St. Peter was eventually found.

qed

Died. Ivan Maisky, 91, Soviet Ambassador to London from 1932 to 1943; in Moscow. A dapper, moonfaced charmer, Anglophile Maisky interpreted Stalin's often twisting policies to the British through the 1930s, forging friendly relations but no alliances with Lord Halifax and Winston Churchill. Under a cloud after the Nazi-Soviet pact and Stalin's 1939 invasion of Finland, he rebounded to become one of London's social lions when Hitler attacked Russia in 1941. A superb p.r. man, Maisky donated the Soviet embassy's iron railing to Britain's wartime scrap drive and was once serenaded with the Internationale by British armament workers. Returning in 1943 to serve as Stalin's Deputy Foreign Minister, Maisky attended the Yalta and Potsdam conferences before finishing his career as an academic specialist in Far East history.

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