Milestones: Oct. 3, 1969

Died. Adolfo López Mateos, 59, progressive former President of Mexico; of a 1967 stroke from which he never fully recovered; in Mexico City. López Mateos was easily elected in 1958 as the candidate of Mexico's one major party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, and spent the next six years bolstering Mexico's economy and international prestige. At home, he quelled labor disputes to entice foreign investment capital and established profit sharing for industrial workers; he spurred agrarian reform by deeding 30 million acres to the peasants, and under his aegis tourism became a $500 million-a-year business. As an internationalist, López Mateos courted heads of state and led Mexico in the campaign for a nuclear-free Latin America; in 1963, he negotiated the return to Mexico of the 437 acres of El Chamizal strip near El Paso, Texas, ending a century-old border dispute with the U.S.

Died. Manya Harari, 63, Russian-born English publisher and translator; of cancer; in London. Equally at home in either culture, she founded her own publishing house, Harvill Press, after World War II, then dedicated the rest of her life to introducing the works (many of which she translated herself) of contemporary Russian authors. She published the writings of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sinyavsky (Abram Tertz) and Evgeny Evtushenko, but was best known for collaborating with Max Hayward on the translation of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago.

Died. Dr. Warren S. McCulloch, 70, major figure in the field of cybernetics; in Old Lyme, Conn. Multifaceted scientist who embraced the disciplines of philosophy, psychiatry and physiology, McCulloch dedicated his life to explaining the workings of the brain and nervous system, especially the thought-storing process, in terms of physical mechanisms. In 1943 he and the late Walter Pitts theorized that the brain could be described as a computing machine, operating on a mathematically logical basis, and that these principles could also be used in computers—a concept that paved the way for great advances in computer technology.

Died. Stella Crater Kunz, 82, former wife of New York State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Force Crater, the central figure in one of the century's classic mysteries; in Mt. Vernon, N.Y. On the evening of August 6, 1930, the recently appointed justice stepped into a taxi after attending a Manhattan dinner party and vanished. A sensational manhunt followed, but failed to turn up a clue. Crater was declared legally dead in 1939 (Stella Crater remarried in 1938), but the case remains unsolved to this day.