In Passing

Berlin, Vt.

Vincent Sardi Jr., N.Y. restaurateur

Vincent Sardi Jr., owner of Sardi’s restaurant, the legendary Broadway watering hole where for decades the New York theater celebrated its opening nights, died Thursday at age 91.

Sardi, who had been hospitalized in Berlin, Vt., died of complications related to a urinary tract infection.

Sardi’s, located in the heart of midtown Manhattan’s theater district, was a magnet for celebrities, particularly in the years before and after World War II. Many of them, especially when they were appearing on Broadway, had their caricatures on its walls.

Sardi’s father started the restaurant in 1921, and the son took over around 1945, after serving in the Marines. Sardi, who was born in New York, eventually sold the restaurant in 1985 but ended up taking control of it again about five years later. Sardi retired in 1997. His grandson, Sean Ricketts, now manages the landmark eatery.

Arlington, Va.

Seymour M. Lipset, social scientist

Seymour Martin Lipset, a leading scholar of democracy and one of the most influential social scientists of the past half-century, died Dec. 31 at Virginia Hospital Center of complications of a stroke. He was 84.

Lipset first explained the connection between economic development and democracy, an insight that earned him immediate attention and made him one of the most-cited political scientists. He also studied the nature of political extremism, how the core American values of equality and achievement keep class conflict in check and what other countries have to teach the United States.

Lipset’s eclectic interests in the peculiarities of U.S. political culture – and his clear prose – proved irresistible to journalists, policymakers and academics.

In 1996, journalist Martin Walker of the Guardian newspaper of London called Lipset “one of America’s most useful intellectuals.”

Author of more than 20 books and editor of two dozen more, Lipset was the only person to have been president of both the American Sociological Association and the American Political Science Association. His 1960 book, “Political Man,” sold more than 400,000 copies and was translated into 20 languages.

Lipset taught at Columbia University, the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University, Harvard University and George Mason University.