Edith Anisfield Wolf

popular name: William Shakespeare

date_of_death: April 23, 1616

age: 52

cause_of_death: Exact cause unknown - possibly died after a brief illness

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best work produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language.

popular name: Albert Camus

date_of_death: January 4, 1960

age: 46

cause_of_death: Automobile accident

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Albert Camus was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. Some of his best known works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall, and The Rebel.The dominant philosophical contribution of Camus’s work is absurdism. While he is often associated with existentialism, he rejected the label, expressing surprise that he would be viewed as a philosophical ally of Sartre. Elements of absurdism and existentialism are present in Camus’s most celebrated writing especially in The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). The protagonists of The Stranger and The Plague must also confront the absurdity of social and cultural orthodoxies, with dire results. Camus died on January 4, 1960 at the age of 46, in a car accident near Sens, in Le Grand Fossard in the small town of Villeblevin. He had spent the New Year's holiday of 1960 at his house in Lourmarin, Vaucluse with his family, and his publisher Michel Gallimard, along with Gallimard's wife, Janine, and daughter. Camus's wife and children went back to Paris by train but Camus decided to return in Gallimard's luxurious Facel Vega FV2. The car crashed into a plane tree on a long straight stretch of the Route nationale 5. Camus, who was in the passenger seat, died instantly. Gallimard died a few days later, although his wife and daughter were unharmed.

popular name: Otto Plath

date_of_death: November 5, 1940

age: 55

cause_of_death: Embolism in the lung and untreated diabetes

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Otto Emil Plath was a German-American writer, academic, and biologist. After reading the writings of Charles Darwin, Plath also developed an interest in biology. In the following years, Plath taught and studied in both German and biology. In 1912, he earned an M.A. from the University of Washington. Beginning in 1922, Plath taught at Boston University. In 1925, Plath earned an M.S. from Harvard University, and in 1928, he earned a Ph.D in science, also from Harvard. Plath worked as a professor of biology and German language at Boston University and as an entomologist, with a specific expertise on bumblebees. He was the father of American poet Sylvia Plath and Warren Plath, and the husband of Aurelia Plath. He wrote the 1934 book Bumblebees and Their Ways. He is notable for being the subject of "Daddy", one of his daughter's most well-known poems. Interesting to note that Otto is the only Plath to be buried at Winthrop Cemetery.