The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 13

OBITUARIES 1 13 The Guardian Wednesday August 21 1996 Camilla Horn image of expressionism of Janet Gaynor. In 1928, however, she was released to make two films for United Artists, starring with John Barrymore in Tempest, a lurid melodrama set in the Russian revolution, and Eternal Love, a historical romance which was Ernst Lubitsch's last silent film. The arrival of talking pictures ended Horn's chances of a Hollywood career, though she made a single sound film for Warners in New York. BSB Heads launched a stage career that included a 1961 tour of Gigi. Her final stage appearance was in 1976-77, in a production of Arsenic and Old Lace at Bad Godesberg.

Her looks proved surprisingly durable: in her seventies she was still a strikingly beautiful woman: Not until the 1980s did she embark on a new film career, as a character actress. She played wonderfully dreadful old ladies in Frankies Braut, a television film, Der Unsichtbare, and Peter Schamoni's Schloss Koenigswald, in which her performance as a royal granny won her the 1987 Bavarian Film Prize. In 1974, she had received the Deutsche Filmpreis, a life achievement award. Camilla Horn's frank 1985 volume of memoirs, Verliebt in die Liebe, reveal her bright intelligence. She was married four times to businessman Karl Geerz, architect Kurt Kurfis, Swiss Robert Schnyder and a newspaper editor Rudolph Muehifenzel.

After the last marriage ended, in 1963, she lived in Herrsch-ing am Ammersee. She spent her last years in a rest home in Bavaria. Hans Albers, Ivan Petrovich, Gustav Froelich. She had a long private alliance with one of her co-stars, Louis Gra-veure, though they never married. Her best-remembered film from the 1930s is Fahrendes Volk, the German-language version of Jacques Feyder's circus drama, Gens de Voyage.

Her biggest popular successes were Die Grosse Sehnsucht (1930) and Der letzte Walzer (1934). Like a lot of continental stars of the day, she was lured to England. Her English was more than passable, but The Return of Raffles (1932), The Matinee Idol (1933) and The Love Nest (1933) gave her few opportunities. She also worked in Paris and Vienna. In 1941-42 she starred in three films in Italy.

At the beginning of the second world war, she had attempted to leave Germany for Switzerland, but was stopped at the border. Thereafter, she found herself out of favour with the Nazi authorities, and therefore the German studios. She left films for farming, and subsequently went into hiding. When the war ended she worked as an interpreter for the occupying Americans, and reappeared on stage, touring the music halls with White Slaves, a film the Nazis banned. A 1948 production of Cocteau's The Eagle Has Two instead of the usual 10, that she neglected to reveal until too late that her feet were considerably larger than Da-gover's and would not fit into the shoes.

Murnau punished her for this time-wasting Cinderella scenario by making her wear the shoes till her feet swelled and it was impos-silbe to shoot the scene. But then he surprised her by offering her the role of Gretchen in his forthcoming Faust, a role he had first intended for Lillian Gish. He later explained: "I had never before in my life seen a girl who could look so beautifully ashamed for two hours." Faust and its characters Camilla's co-stars were Emil Jannings, Yvette Guilbert and Gosta Ekman were to enter film legend. With her oval face, perfect features and a blonde wig simply parted and in long braids, Camilla's Gretchen has both radiance and a solemn innocence. UFA immediately signed her to a four-year contract, which was to prove something of an impediment, since it prevented her from accepting an offer from Max Reinhardt to act on stage in Vienna, at the Theater in der Josefstadt.

Worse, she was obliged to refuse Murnau's invitation to go with him to Hollywood, where she believed she would have played the lead in his masterpiece, Sunrise, in place THE GERMAN actress Camilla Horn, who has died aged 93, made her debut in Friedrich Wil-helm Murnau's silent classic, Faust (1925-26). It was the film that was to ensure her lasting fame. She was born in Frankfurt-am-Main, where her father was a railway worker; her mother was of Italian origin. After elementary school, Camilla was apprenticed as a seamstress in a fashion salon, while studying arts and crafts. She worked as a seamstress in Erfurt, but then, spurred by love for a young doctor, went to Berlin, where she enrolled for acting lessons in the Rudolf Laban School and later took acting lessons from Lucie Hoeflich, the actress wife of Emil Soon she was dancing in Rudolf Nelson's Berlin cabaret, and picking up extra roles in films.

Her big chance came when she was working as an extra on Murnau's Tartuffe, occasionally doing stand-ins for the star, Lil Dagover (who had made her name 'in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari). One day, Dagover was away from the set when Murnau needed a close up of her feet being sexily fitted into her shoes. Camilla was so eager for the job, which meant she would earn 50 marks for the day Radiance and solemn innocence Camilla Horn in Faust RONALD GRANT ARCHIVE Victor Ambartsumian Gordon Smith Way to the neutron stars Talent beyond the fringe Ambartsumian challenging convention shakhbazyan Murnau gave her the role in Faust he had originally intended for Lillian Gish Shot in both English and German versions (it was the first German-language talkie), The Royal Box teamed her with the German-Italian stage star Alexander Moissi in a novelette romance about Edmund Kean. Back in Germany, she was now typed in sophisticated roles, far from the spontaneous, gentle Gretchen. Few of the titles of her films are remembered, though she was teamed with some of the biggest male stars of the day and originality of Ambartsumian's work greatly influenced theories of cosmogeny and the direction of cosmology throughout the world.

His observatory at Byurakan became an international centre, a position greatly reinforced between 1961 and 1972 when Ambartsumian served successively as president of the International Astronomical Union and of the International Council of Scientific Unions. He was a scientist of true international stature. The son of an eminent Armenian philologist, Ambartsumian graduated from Leningrad University in 1928, carrying out post-graduate studies at the nearby Pulkovo Observatory and receiving his doctorate in 1931. He was immediately appointed as a lecturer at Leningrad, becoming professor of astrophysics only three years later. In 1944, he accepted the equivalent chair at Yerevan University in Armenia, from where he organised the construction of the Byurakan Observatory.

In 1989 he made non-scientific news by going on hunger strike for three weeks to draw attention to the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave in neighbouring Azerbaijan. Ambartsumian was twice awarded the highest medal of the Soviet Union, the Hero of Socialist Labour; and, after the Soviet collapse, received Frank Blackaby writes: Your obituary of Sir Anthony Parsons might give readers the impression that, as one of Mrs Thatcher's close advisers, he was fully in tune with her ways of thinking about international affairs. Not so. For instance, during his retirement years he gave a great deal of support and advice to those who were campaigning for severe constraints on the arms trade an idea which could hardly be further from Mrs Thatcher's approach to the issue. alarmed; it is not the men from Mars, but children in combat gear practising disarmament techniques.

It is thought that chalk and blackboards are the main targets and will effectively be destroyed with a hammer. Church Times. Hot hobbyists LIKE football, birdwatching has a whole sub-culture of in-terneccine disputes and jos- Focus getting twitchy David Robinson Camilla Horn, actress, born April 25, 1903; died August 14, 1996 music, were shared by his late wife Vera, whom he married in 1932 and who enriched his life at the mountain-top observatory. There are two sons and two daughters. Anthony Tucker Victor Ambartsumian, astrophysicist, born September 18, 1908; died August 12, 1996 Death Notices JEFFARD, Reginald.

We are sad to announce tho death ol Reginald Jellard on August 1996- Tho family wish to thank all his friends lor their loving support. JONES William Qlynne Moss, MSc PhD, ol Llangollen, died on 18 August alter a long tllnoss which he bore with patience and dignity. Much lovod husband of Barbara, fathor of Anne, Janet and Lou, and grand-lather of Cathy, Robbie, William, Lizzie, Sarah. Tom, Bon. Rachel and Timothy.

We shall alt miss his kindness and gentle humour. Funeral Llangollon Sion Chapot, 23 August 11.30 NIXON, Meg (Rita) on tSth August. 1996, In Lymington intirmary, Hampshire Beloved Wifo of tho tato Or. Gilbert Nixon and much loved Mothor. Grandmother, and Great Grandmother.

Funoral details from Diamond and Son. Lymington. (01590) 672060 To place your announcement telephone 0171 713 4567. Fax 0171 713 4129. twitcher's list unlikely to be on anyone else's.

Ticker: They tick off species as they see them. MORE ANORAKS: James Bunce's obsession with old gas cookers was OK when he had just a couple in his small terraced house in Gloucestershire. But now he's got more than 100. There are cookers in the dining room, bedrooms and the garden shed. As for girlfriends, they just take one look at the Bunce Cooker Museum" and they're off.

Although GregHeathcliff, from Swindon, works for British Rail, he spent 4,000 on a replica Western Class 52 loco which is supposed to be a garden shed. "I've always wanted a train of my own," he says. The second and concluding part of Jackdaw 's anorak lifestyle special. Extracts taken from Focus magazine. Jackdaw wantsjewels.

E-mail jackdawguardlan.co.uk; fax 0171-713 4366; Jackdaw, The Guardian, UOFarringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER. Emily Sheffield the highest award of independent Armenia, the medal of the National Hero. He won major awards throughout the world, became a foreign fellow of the Academies of France, Germany, India and America and, in 1969, of the Royal Society in London. Ambartsumian had an unexpected gift and passion for poetry, which, with his love of Birthdays Princess Margaret, 66; John Austin-Walker, Labour MP, 52; Dame Janet Baker, CH, mezzo-soprano, 63; Chris Brasher, athlete and writer, 68; Donald Dewar, Labour chief whip, 59; Prof Andrew Goudie, geographer, 51; Robert Goloman, artist, 65; Bar-rie Meyer, cricket umpire, 64; Barry Norman, broadcaster and filmgoer, 63; James Pawsey, Conservative MP, 63; Kenny Rogers, country and western singer, 55; Peter Thurnham, Conservative MP, 58. shown to be a possibility by 1940.

The central question was whether this progression of matter through gravitational accretion, increasing density and ultimately an increasingly degenerate state, was the overall evolutionary direction of all galaxies, and thus of the universe itself. In 1947, in a unique amalgamation of observation and creative theory, Ambartsumian turned condensation cosmology upside down by showing that galaxies are surrounded by clusters of stars which occur in distinct types which he called "associations" and which are so young that they must still be forming in regions of expansion and rarefaction. He went on to suggest that these associations of very young stars would be unstable a suggestion quickly confirmed by observation. This led him to propose that many stars arise as specific types as a result of the disintegration of what he called "pro-tostars" enormously massive celestial bodies which could occur within galaxies. At this time, Ambartsumian rejected the notion that these might be neutron stars.

However, in the 1950s, when it was suggested that the highly active radio stars being observed within galaxies were a product of galactic collisions, Ambartsumian calculated and proposed that their produc pursued by Venezuela) at a time when the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Shridath Ramphal, was Guyanese. Furthermore Guatemala had an outstanding claim to Belize, based an similar historical grounds which the Commonwealth had consistently refuted. Hence the diplomatic support in the UN, which might have gone to Argentina for anti-colonial reasons, was brought behind Britain for reasons of the security and self-determination Dinner and dances. The Countess of Normanton: "What makes a party successful is the personal touch. The whole thing is instinctive.

Once I had a dance and the marquee blew down in a storm, and everyone had to move into the house, dragging evening gowns through the mud. Inside, people sat where they could, eating with plates on their laps. The English are wonderful at making the best of bad situations." Tatler at home gives us advice from those who really know, sponsored by Moet Chandon, of course. It hurt YOU know how envious people are when you get a new car? Well, this year really rub it in. The Driving and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) provides a possible text for the Thatcher years.

Suggested by David Elsom. Big bash ONE WORLD Week is an annual education programme, which involves tens ALTHOUGH he never worked outside the former Soviet Union and spent most of his life in his native Armenia, the astrophysicist Victor Ambartsumian, who has died aged 87 at his home within the Byura-kan Observatory, Yerevan, which he founded in 1944 and directed until 1988, changed the thinking of the world of science. A brilliant mathematician with a huge grasp of the intricacies of cosmological theory, he challenged conventional thinking by suggesting that many of the processes involved in the creation and evolution of the universe itself and of individual galaxies occur during the dispersion and rarefaction of matter. From the 1920s onward cosmology and astrophysics, had focused on the theories of condensation and of extremely dense celestial bodies. Edding-ton had pointed out that the enormous density of white dwarf stars, evident from observation, must mean that they comprise degenerate matter in which the electrons are crushed against their nuclei by pressure the first stage of gravitational collapse.

Within a decade this led to the suggestion of neutron stars, whose even more degenerate matter has a density a million times that of white dwarfs a theory that had been worked out in detail and Letters Richard Bourne writes: Your obituary of Sir Anthony Parsons (August 14) left out Par-sons's support for and interest in the Commonwealth. Forty Commonwealth members gave their support to Britain over the FalkJands at the UN thereby blocking the possibility of endorsement for Argentina in the Organisation of American States. Sir Anthony was well aware that there were significant Hispanic claims to much of Guyana (deriving from the former Spanish empire and river where lots of people actors, artists and writers work from home. Often we go for a walk, then come back for lunch. There is always a mixture: friends like Willie Shaw-cross and Paul Johnson.

I bring the ingredients back from Italy Parma ham, basil and ruc-cola from my garden there. I like to cook asparagus with Parmesan. It's instant food for instant friends." Drinks parties. Sophia Steel: "Our house is a great party house. I've painted all the rooms-primary colours and the dining room with clouds and balustrades all a little baroque.

I love to throw themed parties. They are lots of fun and express my choreographic passions I'm apt to burst into song at any point." Weekends in the country. Lady Dashwood: "The root of my parties' success is the house, West Wycombe Park. There are lots of drawing rooms, and it's both very grand and cosy. When I have 24 people to dinner, we use the long table.

Also I invite a mixture of attractive and intelligent people, and try not to have two stars." tion was not by collision but through massive explosions in the nuclei of normal galaxies. This mechanism is now accepted, and with it the existence of super-super-super-novae, expansions of matter of inconceivable violence within galactic nuclei whose spectrum of stellar products may well include neutron stars and massive black holes. However, Ambartsumian pursued his theories of rarefaction and stellar formation into extra-galactic space. In the 1960s, he argued that the tenuous but huge filaments of cosmic gas that connect the galaxies in many galactic clusters confirm that they originated in the explosive expansion of a single huge protogalaxy. OFTEN supported by later observation, Ambartsumian's calculations and proposals opened up the post-war world of cosmological thinking, confirming routes of stellar creation in both condensation and rarefaction, supporting the possibility of either a "big bang" or a "steady state" universe.

Ambartsumian also investigated the surface structure of meteorites and developed a mathematical model of the turbulent creation of planets from a spinning planetary nebula. Despite his apparent isolation in Yerevan, the precision of small states. Although the Gulf war in the early 1990s followed Sir Anthony's retirement from the Foreign Office, he was still an active commentator and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait raised similar issues, important for many of the smaller Commonwealth countries. Parsons bridged the gap between historic views of the Commonwealth, related to British decolonisation, and contemporary views related to global good Citizenship, human rights and democracy. of thousands of people.

It runs from 20 to 27 October and it's theme is "Living on the This year's action kit has a chapter called "DIY which is aimed more specifically at young people. (The first question asks, "Have you ever had to stand up against authority of any kind school, work, It details the case of the East Timor Ploughshares campaign group who broke into a British Aerospace factory in January and damaged a Hawk jet. A section called "questions and activity ideas" asks groups to read aloud the testimony of Joanna Wilson, a protester about Timor, and say why she was justified in her action. It asks them if they have ever stood up against authority, and under what circumstances they would break the law. A section called "Learning to be active citizens" suggests that groups use workshops to examine how the Ploughshares protesters tried to stop the Hawk jets from being used for genocide.

If you spot small green figures in your local area, do not be GORDON Smith, who has died aged 67, was one of the leading Scottish playwrights of recent decades, but also a ubiquitous figure in many as pects of Scottish cultural life. He was respected as a critic not least because he had engaged in most of the art forms about which he wrote. His career as a playwright began in the late 1960s, when he was a producer with responsibility for most of BBC Scotland's somewhat limited artistic output. Smith was at the final rehearsal of the play Cockie, about the life of Lord Cockburn, written by Jack Ronder for Russell Hunter to perform. Hunter recalls: "As we left Old College in Edinburgh that evening, Gordon said to me, 'That was no' bad (which I later realised was a very high compliment indeed).

Now I'm going to write a play for you as First, however, he wrote a play about Van Gogh, called simply Vincent, which was was well received and was put on at the Young Vic and overseas. This encouraged Smith to fulfil his promise to Hunter by writing Jock, the one-man play which established them as a theatrical partnership. It explored the Scottish psyche, and particularly the part played in it by our nation's military history, through the musings of an old soldier. Hunter received the script while he was living in Glasgow and working on the television version of Cockie. He was thrilled by it but set Jock the ultimate test reading the script to his landlady.

"She thought it was hilarious, so I knew it wasn't just me." Thus was a modern Scottish theatrical legend born. Smith read in a newspaper that Clyde Fair International the forerunner of Mayfest was bemoaning the lack of original Scottish theatre. He took along the script, and Jock was premiered in Glasgow to great acclaim before moving to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. After hearing themselves dismissed on radio as "a two- Ambushed IT IS Saturday, 6 July 1996. The Katumatala women are preparing for the day they have awaited all year.

They rub their bodies with coconut oil and dress themselves in shell necklaces, grass skirts and armlets made of vine. They are barefooted, bare-breasted and, under the skirts, bare-bottomed. Soon they will form a vibrant procession and begin the traditional ritual of carrying yams the potato-like tubers from their gardens to their villages. They will also take part in another annual custom. "We will force any man who provokes us to have sex," declares a grass-skirted young Smith theatrical legend man Mafia" outside the mainstream of Scottish theatre, Hunter and Smith thought first of calling themselves Scotia Nostra, but opted instead for Cacciatore Fabbro, the Italian translations of their names.

This was probably to the puzzlement of a decade of Italian visitors to the Edinburgh Festival. After 25 years with the BBC, as a producer for both television and radio, Smith fell victim to cuts in 1980. Indeed, this essentially ended Edinburgh's role as a centre of creative television production. Smith responded by becoming more productive in his other areas of interest, notably through a series of biographies of Scottish painters, the most recent of which on David Donaldson has just been published. He was a big man physically and exerted a powerful presence.

In later years, he reverted largely to journalism; his regular columns, latterly in Scotland on Sunday, were both authoritative and challenging. His death ironically, during the period of the Edinburgh Festival which his work and presence so often graced removes a major figure from the creative side of Scotland. Brian Wilson Gordon Smith, playwright, born December 13, 1928; died August 13, 1996 woman named Primrose. Like their grandmothers and mothers before them, they will spare no mercy to any male from outside their territory who strays into their path. First they will accost him by means of a roadblock and strip him naked.

Then they will hold him down and one by one, ha ve sex with him. Any victim who fails to rise to the occasion will not escape lightly. "We'll take turns to sit on his face," says Primrose triumphantly. "You can have sex with whoever you choose," says Serah Kalubaku. "Even married couples can have flings.

It doesn't interfere with their relationships and it has nothing to do with love. It's purely for fun." The female penchant for raping men is considered an extension of this high-voltage hedonism. "We have to get permission from the village chief to start raping," informs Serah. The tables are turned in the Tro-briand islands of Papua New Guinea. Marie-Claire Royal romps KITCHEN entertaining.

Lady Powell; "I live north of the tlings. It's a world riven into two mutually antagonistic groups, the Twitchers and the Birders, and Gary is a fierce partisan of the latter. "Twitchers?" he says witheringly. "They're the ones who give birdwatching a bad name. They're fanatics." The Twitch-er's sole aim in life is to spot and record as many different varieties of bird as possible, and he'll not think twice about phoning in sick, and chartering a helicopter to the Shetland Islands if a white stork is "showing well" in the area.

But for Gary there are always new birds to photograph or identify by their colouring, call, habitat and behaviour. "That's my challenge," he explains. "I derive most pleasure from the ones which are difficult to identify." Birdwatching slang Birdwatcher: Anyone who watches birds in their back garden. Birder: A more active version. Twitcher: Rare bird, or obsessive bird fan who stalks it.

Stringer: Person who falsely claims to have seen a particular bird. Blocker: A rare bird on a.