Milestones

By Harriet Barovick, Tam M. Gray, Daniel S. Levy, Lina Lofaro, Alain Sanders and David Van Biema

DIED. DR. MARY S. CALDERONE, 94, sex-education crusader; in Kennett Square, Pa. Amid criticism that she was a purveyor of smut, Calderone proclaimed America a "sexophobic society, afraid of the wrong things for the wrong reasons," and campaigned for responsible sex education in public schools. In 1964 she helped found the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S.

DIED. JONATHAN B. POSTEL, 55, scraggly-bearded Internet guru often called the father of the World Wide Web; following heart surgery; in Santa Monica, Calif. As the creator of the Internet's address system, Postel devised the coding that allows users to type words, rather than numbers, to locate websites.

DIED. RUTH BRINE, 78, ebullient former senior editor of TIME; in New York City. Brine, an Iowa native who grew up skating on the Mississippi, opted in 1945 to begin her career at TIME rather than Newsweek because of its proximity to Rockefeller Center's skating rink. During her four-decade career, she interviewed such icons as Pablo Picasso and Maria Callas and conceived cover stories on women, crime and the elderly.

DIED. ERIC AMBLER, 89, pioneering thriller writer; in London. With such books as Epitaph for a Spy and A Coffin for Dimitrios, Ambler elevated the spy novel to the level of literature. "As I saw it, the thriller had nowhere to go but up," he wrote in his 1985 autobiography. Several of his 19 books were made into films, including Journey into Fear starring Orson Welles. Ambler, who also wrote screenplays, was nominated for an Academy Award for The Cruel Sea (1953).

DIED. JOAN HICKSON, 92, British character actress; in Colchester, England. Hickson, whose career on the stage and screen began in 1927, won international fame in 1984 as a septuagenarian--TV's sharp-witted sleuth Miss Jane Marple, in the BBC series Mystery! Queen Elizabeth II, a devoted fan of Hickson, awarded her the Order of the British Empire in 1987.