Milestones

RESIGNED. JOHN ASHCROFT, 62, embattled U.S. Attorney General; after a tenure characterized by controversy; in Washington. Mistrusted by Democrats, in part for his staunch religious conservatism, Ashcroft was criticized by civil libertarians after Sept. 11 for the Patriot Act, legislation they felt gave too much power to law enforce-ment. White House counsel Alberto Gonzales has been nominated to replace him.

UNDERGOING TREATMENT.ELIZABETH EDWARDS, 55, wife of former Democratic vice-presidential nominee John Edwards; for breast cancer, diagnosed definitively a day after the election; in Washington. After four months of chemotherapy, Edwards is scheduled to undergo a lumpectomy — a procedure that removes the tumor and surrounding tissue while preserving the breast. A family spokesman said the cancer had not spread.

DIED.IRIS CHANG, 36, American historian whose 1997 best seller The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II chronicled the grisly rape, torture and murder of hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians by Japanese soldiers in the former Chinese capital in the late 1930s; of suicide; near Los Gatos, California. Chang, whose book was the first full-length nonfiction account of the brutality, said, “I didn’t care if I made a cent from it. I wrote it out of a sense of rage.” She was hospitalized for depression earlier this year as she was researching her fourth book, on U.S. soldiers imprisoned by the Japanese.

DIED. EMLYN HUGHES, 57, ebullient and well-loved former captain of Liverpool Football Club and England; from a brain tumor diagnosed 15 months ago; near Sheffield, England. As a tenacious young footballer in the late 1960s, Hughes’ wild charges and galloping gait earned him the moniker Crazy Horse. Over a 20-year career, he tamed his exuberance into steady play, becoming captain and leading Liverpool to four league titles and two European Cups from 1976 to 1980. After retirement, Hughes became a TV celebrity and fixture of a long-running bbc sports quiz show.

DIED. GIBSON KENTE, 72, revolutionary South African playwright considered the founding father of black-township theater; in Soweto. The first to bring the realities of township crime, poverty and politics to the stage — often using African gospel and jazz — Kente produced more than 20 plays, including Manana, the Jazz Prophet and the antiapartheid piece How Long. Last year he defied his country’s taboos about aids by acknowledging publicly that he was HIV positive.

DIED. THEODORE TAYLOR, 79, theoretical physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory during the cold war who specialized in designing smaller, more powerful atom bombs — and then became a fierce antinuclear campaigner; in Silver Spring, Maryland. His “Davy Crockett” — a 23-kg device that fit in a suitcase — outpowered the lab’s 4,091-kg “Little Boy” bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. In the mid-1960s Taylor, alarmed at the proliferation of the devices, became a self-described “nuclear dropout.” “My work at Los Alamos had been so intellectually stimulating but so insane,” he said.

DIED. HOWARD KEEL, 85, barrel-chested star of stage, screen and television; in Palm Desert, California. A powerful stage actor of the 1940s and ’50s, Keel’s ringing baritone and cavalier stage presence won him critical acclaim in Hollywood musicals including Show Boat, Kiss Me Kate and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Keel rocketed to stardom as sharpshooter Frank Butler in Annie Get Your Gun, the first of a string of musicals he made for MGM. In 1981 he landed the role of oil-rich widower Clayton Farlow on the nighttime TV soap Dallas.