Milestones

DIED. Alister Hardy, 89, one of Britain's most distinguished and unorthodox marine biologists, who waged a lifelong inquiry into ways of reconciling Darwin's theory of evolution with his own conviction that transcendental religious experience was a "biological fact"; of a stroke suffered two weeks ago, only two days before he was to receive formally the $185,000 Templeton Prize for progress in religion; in Oxford, England.