The discoverer of the DNA double helix or the inventor of the morning-after pill: the techno-obituaries of 2025

BarcelonaEach year we dedicate the last Digits and junk To briefly remember, on the occasion of their death, personalities who often don't reach celebrity status but have left a remarkable legacy in the technological field. This is the selection for 2025, which is now ending.

Bill Atkinson (1951)

When Steve Jobs wanted the original Macintosh to be able to quickly draw circles and ellipses on the screen, it was Bill Atkinson who wrote the machine code to do so at an acceptable speed. He then created MacPaint, the application that demonstrated to the world that a personal computer could be a creative tool. His more discreet but crucial contribution was QuickDraw, the graphics engine that powered the Mac interface for more than twenty years. In the mid-1990s, he invented HyperCard, a visual programming environment that anticipated the web and was a conceptual predecessor to the... wikis.

James Watson (1928)

In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick revealed the double helix structure of DNA, a discovery that opened the door to modern genetics. The story is marred by the controversial exclusion of Rosalind Franklin, whose X-ray diffraction data were crucial to reaching the correct conclusion. Watson received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1962, but his subsequent statements about intelligence and race ultimately deprived him of honors and led to his scientific isolation. He died at the age of 97, leaving a legacy divided between scientific brilliance and the opinions that tarnished his reputation at the end of his life.

Jim Lovell (1928) / Ed Smylie (1927)

In April 1970, Apollo 13 was en route to the Moon when an explosion left the crew without enough oxygen and with their batteries running on fumes. This year, two of the key figures in the incident passed away. Jim Lovell, as commander, had to pilot the spacecraft using the lunar module as a lifeboat. Meanwhile, in Houston, Ed Smylie led the team of engineers who, in 48 hours, designed an adapter to filter carbon dioxide from onboard materials using cardboard, electrical tape, and plastic cable ties. Without this improvisation, the three astronauts would have suffocated from their own breathing. The rescue was a triumph of technical ingenuity under extreme pressure and a reminder that, sometimes, saving lives requires not cutting-edge technology but equal parts ingenuity and desperation. Lovell died at 97 and Smylie at 98.

Sharon Camp (1944) / Étienne-Émile Baulieu (1926)

Sharon Camp developed emergency contraception, known as the "morning-after pill," which has prevented millions of unwanted pregnancies worldwide and is crucial for victims of sexual assault. Simultaneously, French biochemist Étienne-Émile Baulieu synthesized mifepristone, the active ingredient in the abortion pill RU-486, which since the late 1980s has allowed for safer and less invasive abortions than traditional surgical methods. Both had to overcome fierce political and religious resistance. Their contributions have empowered millions of women to make fundamental decisions about their own bodies, in a battleground that remains open 40 years later.

Robin Merryweather (1933)

Robin Merryweather, an engineer at Pilkington Glass, developed the systems for head-up display Head-up displays (HUDs) project critical information onto the windshields of fighter jets without requiring pilots to take their eyes off the sky. The technology, born out of military necessity in the 1960s, eventually filtered into commercial aviation and, later, high-end cars. Merryweather didn't invent the HUD—the first experiments date back to World War II—but he made it practical, reliable, and resistant to vibrations and extreme temperature changes. He has died at the age of 92, at a time when HUDs are already commonplace in consumer vehicles.

Robert Jarvik (1946)

Cardiologist and engineer Robert Jarvik created the first permanent artificial heart successfully implanted in a human: the Jarvik-7, which in 1982 allowed Barney Clark to live 112 more days. Although the technology failed to become a permanent solution—patients suffered infections and strokes—it paved the way for ventricular assist devices that today keep thousands of patients alive while awaiting a transplant. Later, Jarvik perfected smaller and less invasive mechanical pumps. He died at the age of 79, at a time when artificial hearts are now real bridges between terminal heart disease and a second chance.

Rebecca Heineman (1963)

National video game champion Space Invaders In 1980, at just 16 years old, Rebecca Heineman turned that triumph into a four-decade-long career as a programmer. She founded Logicware, Contraband Entertainment, and Olde Sküül, where she programmed legendary ports like the ill-fated Dragon's Lair for the NES and the popular 3DO port of Doom. A transgender pioneer in a male-dominated industry, she publicly announced her transition in 2003, at a time when taking that step could still mean professional ostracism. Having died at 62, she leaves behind a legacy of dozens of games and yet another demonstration that talent knows no gender.

Claudi Alsina (1952)

The mathematician and popularizer Claudi Alsina spent four decades teaching at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia and writing books that made mathematics understandable to those who hated it. With titles such as Everyday Geometry and The Hypotenuse ClubHe humorously and patiently argued that mathematics is not an abstract torture but a way of looking at the world with curiosity. Death at age 73...leaves hundreds of students convinced that understanding a theorem can be as stimulating as solving a puzzle.

Artur Tresserras (1944)

In the 1970s and 80s, many homes in Spain enjoyed music with far superior sound quality than today, thanks to the high-fidelity equipment manufactured by Vieta in Poblenou, Barcelona. A key component of that equipment was the loudspeaker system created by industrial engineer Artur Tresserras, who designed all its parts, from the diaphragm material to the acoustic enclosure calculations, often in original shapes. When Vieta ceased manufacturing electronics, Tresserras continued loudspeaker production, founding the company Acutres, where I had the privilege of working with him and learning from his skill in industrializing his sonic nuances. He finished his professional career as director of the optical disc studio for the Japanese company Pioneer.

Carl Lundström (1959)

Heir to a fortune made in the timber industry, Carl Lundström used a portion of it to finance The Pirate Bay, the Swedish platform that, between 2003 and 2014, facilitated the download of millions of copyrighted files and became the symbol of massive digital piracy. In 2009, he was sentenced to prison and fined millions along with the site's founders, but he never showed remorse. He argued that sharing culture should not be a crime and that the industry of copyright It was outdated. Death at 66 in a plane crash in Slovenia; for some he was a philanthropist of digital freedom; for others, the facilitator of massive theft.

David Cope (1941)

Composer and professor at the University of California, David Cope dedicated four decades to demonstrating that machines could create music indistinguishable from human music. His EMI (Experiments in Musical Intelligence) program generated compositions in the style of Bach, Mozart, and Chopin that fooled critics and professional musicians. When he presented a computer-generated "Mozart" symphony in 1997, the outrage was as great as the fascination. Cope opened an uncomfortable debate about creativity and authenticity that today, with generative AI, seems prophetic. He died at 84, making it clear that music doesn't require soul to move people; good mathematical patterns suffice.

Han Jong-hee (1963)

For two decades, Han Jong-hee climbed the ranks at Samsung, becoming its co-CEO in 2021, responsible for the display devices and smart home appliance division. Under his leadership, Samsung maintained its global leadership in OLED displays and invested heavily in integrating AI into refrigerators, washing machines, and televisions—a path other manufacturers have followed with varying degrees of success. He died at the age of 62 from cardiac arrest, at a time when Samsung was beginning to lose market share to more agile and cheaper Chinese rivals. His legacy is reflected in the fact that in millions of homes worldwide, a Samsung television remains synonymous with quality, though no longer with undisputed technological leadership.

Vince Zampella (1969)

Vince Zampella was the creator of Call of DutyThe franchise that defined war video games and has amassed sales exceeding $30 billion. After a traumatic departure from Activision in 2010 due to legal and creative disputes, he founded Respawn Entertainment, where he created Titanfall and Apex LegendsTwo titles that proved there were still gaps in a saturated market. Killed in a car accident in his Ferrari in California, he was working on a new, unspecified project supposedly intended to "reinvent cooperative multiplayer."