PASSINGS: Milka Planinc, Jerrold Marsden, Gloria Green, Frank Bourgholtzer, Frederik Chel, Sherman J. Maisel

Milka Planinc

Former premier of Yugoslavia

Milka Planinc, 85, who was prime minister in the 1980s in what was then communist Yugoslavia, died Thursday in a Zagreb clinic after a long illness, the Croatian state-run news agency reported.

Planinc was a high-level communist official in Yugoslavia, a close associate of longtime President Josip Broz Tito and the first female premier of a communist country. From 1982 to 1986, she headed the Federal Executive Council, the federal Cabinet.

Yugoslavia disintegrated in wars in the early 1990s, and the country no longer exists. Planinc retired from politics.

Born Nov. 21, 1924, she was disliked in Croatia for crushing a 1971 movement seeking more independence for Croatia within Yugoslavia.

Jerrold Marsden

Caltech mathematician

Jerrold Marsden, 68, a Caltech professor who was one of the world’s leading experts in mathematical and theoretical mechanics, died Sept. 21 at his home in Pasadena, the school announced. He had cancer.

Marsden was the Carl F. Braun professor of Engineering, Control and Dynamical Systems and Applied and Computational Mathematics. His research led to advances in such fields as spacecraft mission design.

Marsden went to Caltech in 1992 from the faculty at UC Berkeley.

He was born Aug. 17, 1942, in British Columbia and graduated from the University of Toronto in 1965 with a bachelor of science degree in mathematics. He earned a doctorate from Princeton University in 1968 in applied mathematics.

Marsden also helped found and until 1994 was director of the Fields Institute, a mathematical research facility at the University of Toronto.

Gloria Green

Glendale Career College owner

Gloria Green, 82, longtime owner of Glendale Career College, died Sept. 24 at the Rehabilitation Centre in Beverly Hills of complications from diabetes, said her son, Richard.

Glendale Career College offered career training to more than 35,000 people during Green’s 25 years. She took over what had been the Glendale College of Business in 1975 and expanded the curriculum to include instruction in technology as well as medical and legal fields. She also ran the Nevada Career Institute in Las Vegas.

She was born Jan. 18, 1928, in Brooklyn, N.Y. Green sold the college in 2000 and worked as an actress, including a role in the 2006 film “Even Money.”

Frank Bourgholtzer

NBC’s first full-time White House reporter

Frank Bourgholtzer, 90, the first full-time White House correspondent for NBC News, died Friday at his home in Santa Monica, his family said.

Bourgholtzer, who was born in New York City on Oct. 26, 1919, joined NBC in 1946 and covered President Truman from 1947 to 1953. After assignments in Europe, he joined the NBC bureau in Los Angeles in 1969, where he remained until retiring in 1986.

Frederik Chel, who served in the state Assembly from 1974 to 1978, died Oct. 5 at his home in Long Beach of complications from Parkinson’s disease, said his son, Fred. Chel was a Democrat representing the 58th District, which then included Lakewood, Hawaiian Gardens and part of Long Beach. He was 80.

Sherman J. Maisel, a former governor of the Federal Reserve and a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, died Sept. 29 of respiratory failure in San Francisco, the school announced. He was 92.

-- Times staff and wire reports

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