Milestones: Jan. 3, 1983

RECOVERING. Nancy Reagan, 61, after a small growth on her upper lip was excised and diagnosed as basal-cell epithelioma, a curable form of skin cancer. The First Lady, who joked with her staff about her "stiff upper lip," will wear a small bandage for a few days.

DIED. Leonid Kogan, 58, slight "aristocrat of the violin," cherished by worldwide audiences for his poker-face pyrotechnics and the silken refinement of his playing; of causes and in a location not announced by Soviet officials. A prodigy who burst into the international spotlight at age 27 by winning the 1951 Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Brussels, Kogan's flawless but aloof technique could on occasion produce bloodless interpretations. A Jew who denied that Moscow was guilty of anti-Semitic discrimination, he publicly criticized dissidents like Andrei Sakharov.

DIED. Jack Webb, 62, actor and alter ego of steely, deadpan Sergeant Joe Friday ("Just the facts, ma'am") on Dragnet; of heart disease; in West Hollywood, Calif. A self-styled "demon at work" who directed and produced most of the episodes both on radio (1949-56) and during two TV runs (1951-59, 1967-70), Webb continued to produce movies (The D.I.) and TV series (Adam-12, Emergency!).

DIED. Dwight Macdonald, 76, contentious cultural watchdog who wryly tilted against both Philistinism and pretension; in New York City. Educated at Exeter and Yale, Macdonald wrote for FORTUNE from 1929 to 1936. His intellectual life was an odyssey: he was a Trotskyite who opposed World War II and singlehanded ran the pacifist-leftist journal Politics (1944-49). Next he declared himself a "conservative anarchist" and in his last major political stand supported the antiwar movement of the '60s. A fastidious critic, he graced Esquire and The New Yorker with sometimes highhanded pronouncements about movies, books and overblown fads. Observing in a 1960 essay that "the Lords of Kitsch sell culture to the masses," Macdonald famously defined and deflated the tastes of Masscult and Midcult in the U.S.

DIED. Lawrence Hoyt, 81, entrepreneurial book merchandiser who pushed bestsellers more than good writers, turning a chain of department store penny-a-day rental libraries he co-founded in 1932 into Waldenbooks, the nation's largest chain of booksellers with 800 splashy, look-alike retail outlets; in Bridgeport, Conn.

DIED. Arthur Rubinstein, 95, elegant concert pianist; in Geneva (see MUSIC).