PASSINGS

Oscar G. Mayer

Grandson of founder of meat company

Oscar G. Mayer, 95, retired chairman of the meat-processing company that bears his name, died of old age Monday at a hospice facility in Fitchburg, Wis., according to his wife, Geraldine.

He was the third Oscar Mayer in the family that founded Oscar Mayer Foods. His grandfather, Oscar F. Mayer, died in 1955 and his father, Oscar G. Mayer Sr., died in 1965.

Oscar G. Mayer was named president in 1955 and chairman in 1966. He retired in 1977, soon after the company recorded its first $1-billion year. It was later sold to General Foods and is now a business unit of Kraft.

Born in Chicago in 1914, Mayer started working for the family business in 1936 as a production trainee after graduating from Cornell University and doing post-graduate work at Harvard Business School.

Mayer’s grandfather entered the retail meat business in 1873 at age 14 when he answered a “help wanted” sign in the window of a Detroit butcher shop, according to a history of the company on the Kraft website.

He moved to Chicago soon after, where he was joined by his brother Gottfried, a sausage maker from Germany. By 1900, the Mayer brothers were delivering their products across Chicago by horse-drawn wagon. In 1924, they added the first packaged, sliced bacon, and in 1936, the Wienermobile, which today travels 50,000 miles a year promoting the brand.

Hans W. Liepmann

Longtime Caltech physics professor

Hans W. Liepmann, 94, a longtime Caltech physics professor and researcher who specialized in aerodynamics and fluid mechanics, died June 24 at his home in La Cañada Flintridge, the university announced. The cause of death was not given.

Liepmann arrived at Caltech in 1939 and became a full professor in 1949. He was director of the university’s Graduate Aeronautical Laboratories from 1972 to 1985, when he took emeritus status.

Among the honors he received were the National Medal of Science, the National Medal of Technology and the Ludwig Prandtl Ring.

Born in Berlin in 1914, Liepmann followed his family to Turkey in 1934 after his physician father took a post at the University of Istanbul. He earned a doctorate in physics from the University of Zurich, then decided to study experimental fluid mechanics under aeronautics pioneer Theodore von Karman at Caltech.

Besides working at the Pasadena institute, Liepmann taught courses on high-speed aerodynamics to engineers at Douglas and Lockheed aircraft companies during World War II.

Tony Scott, TV critic for Daily Variety from 1967 to 1997, died Tuesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after a fall. He was 85.

-- times staff and wire reports

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