BORN. To Robyn Gibson, 27, and Mel Gibson, 28, American-born Australian hunky-dory actor (The Year of Living Dangerously, The Bounty): their fourth child, third son; in Sydney.

DIED. Soia Mentschikoff, 69, Russian-born legal scholar and educator who specialized in commercial law and broke down many professional barriers: in 1947 she became the first woman to teach law at Harvard, in 1951 the first at the University of Chicago; from 1974 until her 1982 retirement, she was dean of the University of Miami law school, one of the first women so appointed at an accredited U.S. institution; of cancer; in Coral Gables, Fla.

DIED. Lee Krasner, 75, pioneer abstract expressionist painter of the New York School, whose mastery of draftsmanship and color, informed by an angry toughness and an exceptionally strong sense of rhythm, showed the influence of Matisse and Picasso as well as Jackson Pollock, her husband from 1945 until his death in 1956; after a long illness; in New York City. When they met in 1936, the Brooklyn-born Krasner was the better credentialed of the two and helped move Pollock toward the avantgarde. She continued to paint in a mutually respectful, noncompetitive partnership with him during the years of poverty and productivity on their farm in East Hampton, N.Y. Krasner finally saw her work attract recognition and respect in a celebrated 1983 retrospective that is still making the rounds of U.S. museums.

DIED. Joseph Losey, 75, expatriate American cinema director whose films were relentless, almost clinical studies of human frailty and spiritual corruption; of cancer; in London. An avowed leftist forced into exile by the McCarthy-era blacklist, he started working in England in 1952 and collaborated with Writer Harold Pinter on most of his best films, including The Servant (1963), Accident (1966) and The Go-Between, which won first prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1971.

DIED. James H. Rowe, 75, lawyer, influential New Dealer and trusted aide of Franklin Roosevelt who was a friend and adviser to subsequent Democratic Presidents, especially Lyndon Johnson, and a back-room power in Democratic politics for 40 years; in Washington, D.C. Always nostalgic, he called the heady days of the 1930s the most exciting since those of the founding fathers, adding, "And I'm not so damned sure about the founding fathers."

DIED. Estelle Winwood, 101, fey, indefatigable slip of a British character actress who in an eight-decade career appeared on Broadway in some 40 plays, especially those of G.B. Shaw, Oscar Wilde and Noel Coward, and a score of movies, including The Glass Slipper (1955) and Murder by Death (1976); in Los Angeles.