Notable deaths last week

• A legend of film, theater and comedy in nearly equal measure, Mike Nichols was an unquestioned fixture of smart, urbane American culture across a relentlessly versatile, six-decade career that on stage or screen, reliably coursed with crackling intelligence.

Nichols won nine Tonys, an Oscar, several Emmys and a Grammy. He made up the lanky half of his groundbreaking comic duo with Elaine May. As a director, he made countless performers - from Dustin Hoffman to Whoopi Goldberg - into stars. To consistent acclaim, he adapted Edward Albee, Neil Simon, Tony Kushner and Arthur Miller.

Nichols, who died at 83, was a supreme orchestrator of material, talent and taste. In films like "The Graduate," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "Carnal Knowledge," he left not only a firm stamp of authorship. But with a dry wit and a classical eye, he choreographed caustic social commentaries of couples drunk with bitterness, bored with regret and apprehensive in flight.

• Wilhelm "Willy" Burgdorfer, the Swiss-born researcher who gained international recognition for discovering the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, has died at 89 in western Montana.

Burgdorfer was educated in Switzerland. He went to the Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Hamilton as a research fellow in 1951 and joined the staff as a medical entomologist six years later.

He spent decades researching the connections between animal and human diseases caused by the bites of fleas, ticks and mosquitoes.

In 1982, while he and another researcher were studying deer ticks in hopes of uncovering the cause of a spotted fever outbreak in New York, Burgdorfer found the microorganisms called spirochetes that would prove to be the cause of Lyme disease.

• Glen A. Larson, the writer and producer behind well-loved TV series such as the original "Battlestar Galactica," "Knight Rider," "Magnum, P.I." and "Quincy, M.E.," has died. He was 77.

Glen Larson, also an accomplished singer and composer, was a powerhouse in the television landscape in the 1970s and 1980s, when he churned out hits that became staples in millions of living rooms every night.

He also co-composed the theme songs for some of his hits, including the frequently sampled tune from "Knight Rider" and the orchestral music behind "Battlestar Galactica," his son said.

"He was sort of an icon," James Larson said. "There are a lot of interesting things like that."

Glen Larson was nominated three times for an Emmy, once for a Grammy for the original score of "Battlestar Galactica," and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1985.

• The Duchess of Alba, one of Spain's wealthiest and most colorful aristocrats and recognized as the world's most titled noble, has died. She was 88.

Maria del Rosario Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart y Silva was related to Winston Churchill and shared toys with the future Queen Elizabeth - they were born less than a month apart - while living in England as a girl.

Twice-widowed, the fabulously wealthy noble had an outspoken nature and a predilection for extravagantly colorful, almost hippy-style clothing even late in life. Known simply as Cayetana, she was for decades a mainstay of the gossip press.

Forbes recently estimated her wealth to be in the region of $3.5 billion.

• Jimmy Ruffin, the Motown singer whose hits include "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" and "Hold on to My Love," has died at 78.

Ruffin was the older brother of Temptations lead singer David Ruffin, who died in 1991 at age 50.

Jimmy Lee Ruffin was born on May 7, 1936, in Collinsville, Mississippi. He was signed to Berry Gordy's Motown Records, and had a string of hits in the 1960s, including "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted," which became a Top 10 pop hit.

He had continued success with songs such as "I've Passed This Way Before" and "Gonna Give Her All the Love I've Got," but Ruffin marked a comeback in 1980 with his second Top 10 hit, "Hold on to My Love." The song was produced by Robin Gibb, the Bee Gees member who died in 2012.

• Ken Takakura, a craggy-faced, quiet star known for playing outlaws and stoic heroes in scores of Japanese films, has died of lymphoma. He was 83.

Perhaps best known abroad for his police inspector role in Ridley Scott's "Black Rain" in 1989, Takakura died Nov. 10 at a Tokyo hospital where he was treated for the illness, according to his office and media reports Tuesday.

He surged to stardom after his 1956 debut, becoming an icon in yakuza films such as "Abashiri Prison" in the 1960s. Much of his appeal to the Japanese public stemmed from his image as a hero fighting authority figures on behalf of the poor and weak.

In the 2012 award-winning "Dearest," the last of Takakura's films, he plays a retired prison warden who goes on a soul-searching trip with a postcard that arrived after his wife's death.

• Longtime Los Angeles Times film critic Charles Champlin has died at age 88.

A Harvard-educated native of Hammondsport, New York, Champlin worked at Time and Life magazines for 17 years before coming to the Times in 1965 as an entertainment editor and columnist.

Champlin was the principal film critic at the Times from 1967 until 1980, when he shifted to book reviews and a "Critic at Large" column that took a broader look at the arts. He retired in 1991 but continued contributing to the Times and wrote books, including one on George Lucas and another on his own struggle with losing his sight. Champlin became legally blind in 1999.

• Dessie Hughes, a leading Irish racehorse trainer who rode Davy Lad to victory in the prestigious Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1977, has died. He was 71.

• Samuel Klein, the Polish-born founder of Brazil's largest home-appliance retailer, has died, the company said in a statement. He was 91.

Born in 1923 in a village near Lublin, Klein was one of nine children born to a Jewish family taken by the Nazis to the Treblinka concentration camp. He, his father and one brother survived. His mother and other siblings perished in Treblinka.

He survived two years at the Majdanek concentration camp in Lublin from where he escaped in 1944.

After a few years living in Germany, he arrived in Brazil in 1952 and settled in the Sao Paulo industrial suburb of Sao Caetano where he sold clothing door-to-door, allowing customers to pay for merchandise in monthly installments.

He founded his first home-appliance store in 1957 and called it Casas Bahia because most of his customers were workers from that northeastern state working in Brazil's biggest city.

There are more than 500 Casas Bahia stores in 13 states throughout Brazil.