PASSINGS: Robert C. Pierpoint, Aron Kupperman, Begum Nusrat Bhutto

ROBERT C. PIERPOINT

CBS News correspondent covered six presidents

Robert C. Pierpoint, 86, a CBS News correspondent who covered six presidents, the Korean War, the Kennedy assassination and the Iranian hostage crisis in a career that spanned more than four decades, died Saturday of complications from surgery at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, his family said.

The Santa Barbara resident had broken his hip Oct. 12.

After making his name covering the Korean War — a role he reprised when he provided his radio voice for the widely watched final episode of “MASH” in 1983 — Pierpoint became a White House correspondent during the Eisenhower administration, a position he would hold through the Carter administration.

Pierpoint reported from the White House for 23 years, a period he chronicled in his 1981 memoir, “At the White House.”

He moved to covering the State Department in 1980 and ended his career 10 years later on the show “Sunday Morning” with Charles Kuralt.

Born May 16, 1925, in Redondo Beach, Pierpoint joined the Navy in 1943 but didn’t see action. He graduated from the University of Redlands, where his papers and archives are now kept.

While a graduate student at the University of Stockholm in the late 1940s, he began work as a stringer for CBS and found his calling. His coverage of an attempted Communist coup in Finland won him attention, and he was sent to Tokyo as a full-time correspondent, which led to his coverage of the Korean War.

ARON KUPPERMAN

Emritus professor of chemistry at Caltech

Aron Kupperman, 85, an emeritus professor of chemistry at Caltech who pioneered the use of early computers to measure chemical reactions, died Oct. 15 at his home in Altadena, the university announced. The cause was not given.

While practicing computational chemistry, Kupperman used an IBM 370 mainframe computer during the 1970s to complete the world’s first complete three-dimensional picture of a quantum mechanical reaction, according to Caltech.

A native of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Kupperman was born May 6, 1926. He studied at the University of Sao Paulo, receiving a bachelor’s in chemical engineering and another in civil engineering. He taught in Brazil and Scotland before coming to the United States and earning a doctorate at the University of Notre Dame in 1955.

He taught at the University of Illinois before joining Caltech as professor of chemical physics in 1963. He took emeritus status in 2010.

BEGUM NUSRAT BHUTTO

Wife, mother of Pakistani prime ministers

Begum Nusrat Bhutto, 82, whose husband and daughter both served as prime ministers of Pakistan and a political force herself, died Sunday in Dubai after a long illness, a spokesman for the family’s political party said.

Bhutto’s life tracked many of the ups and downs in Pakistani politics. Her husband, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was the founder of the Pakistan People’s Party that controls the government in Pakistan today. He served as both prime minister and president in the 1970s.

Begum Nusrat Bhutto took over as head of the Pakistan People’s Party for several years after her husband was hanged in 1979, following what many believed was a politically motivated conspiracy and murder trial. She also served in Pakistan’s parliament.

Her daughter, Benazir Bhutto, took over as head of the Pakistan People’s Party and served twice as prime minister. She was killed in a suicide bomb attack in 2007, shortly after returning to the country to participate in elections following years of exile in Dubai. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, is now Pakistan’s president.

Harold Davison, a London-born talent agent, manager, music producer and executive who brought Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Judy Garland to European audiences and helped launch the Dave Clark Five and other British rockers in America, died Oct. 11 of congestive heart failure in Palm Springs. He was 89.

Times staff and wire reports

news.obits@latimes.com