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Paul S. Boyer, an intellectual historian who wrote groundbreaking studies of the Salem witch trials, the history of apocalyptic movements and the response of the American public to the nuclear annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, died on March 17 in Madison, Wis. He was 78. The cause was cancer, said his wife, Ann. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Peter Bergman, a founding member of the surrealist comedy troupe Firesign Theater, whose albums became cult favorites among college students in the late 1960s and '70s for a brand of sly, multilayered satire so dense it seemed riddled with non sequiturs until the second, third or 30th listening, died on Friday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 72. The cause was complications of leukemia, said Jeff Abraham, a spokesman for the group. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Amid Capeci, an art director who helped redesign Rolling Stone and Newsweek as they struggled to reconnect with subscribers in an Internet Age landscape of browsers, died on Tuesday in New York. He was 50. The cause was melanoma, his wife, Amy Conway, said. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Neil Hope grew up in the 1980s before an audience of millions as a star in a pair of gritty Canadian television dramas, ''Degrassi Junior High'' and its sequel, ''Degrassi High.'' The shows were cultural touchstones in Canada and cult favorites in the United States, where they anticipated teenage docudramas like MTV's ''Real World'' and soaps like ''Beverly Hills, 90210.'' Mr. Hope had few secrets left after his five years in the role of the troubled teenage character Derek (Wheels) Wheeler. The show's producers admitted all along that the story of Wheels, a boy who stumbles through misfortunes before drifting into alcoholism, drew broadly on the life of Mr. Hope, who never had formal acting training. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sid Melton, a jug-eared character actor best known for his regular roles in the television shows ''Make Room for Daddy'' and ''Green Acres,'' and for his unflagging reliability as the comic relief in many science fiction and noir films of the 1950s, died on Wednesday in Burbank, Calif. He was 94. His death was confirmed by a spokesman for Providence St. Joseph Medical Center. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Rev. Dean Brackley belonged to an order of priests, the Jesuits, sometimes referred to as ''God's Marines,'' because of a 16th-century founder's military background and because of their long tradition of intellectual rigor as teachers and missionaries. Father Brackley, who died on Oct. 16 in El Salvador, imbued that nickname with some literal meaning in 1990, when he left a teaching job at Fordham University to take up residence in the San Salvador university dormitory where six Jesuit priests and two women had recently been killed by government military forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paul Leka, a songwriter and producer who worked with many recording stars but who was best known for writing the chanting chorus of ''Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye),'' a No. 1 hit in 1969 that was reborn in the 1970s as a sports arena anthem, died on Oct. 12 in a hospice near his home in Sharon, Conn. He was 68. The cause was lung cancer, said his brother, George. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

John M. Blum, an influential historian of the American presidency whose 1954 biography of a maligned Theodore Roosevelt was pivotal in establishing the 26th president's reputation as one of the country's great chief executives, died on Monday at his home in North Branford, Conn. He was 90. His death was confirmed by his son, Thomas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When the Canadian police began connecting the dots in a series of child abductions and torture-murders in the summer of 1981, Clifford Olson, a career criminal with a history of sexual assaults, was placed on a list of potential suspects. It was a good hunch, as it turned out. But the police remain haunted by the fact that Mr. Olson, who died on Sept. 30 while serving a life sentence in Quebec, not only killed seven children before coming under suspicion; he also committed four more murders while supposedly under surveillance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]