Film and TV actor with cerebral palsy who played Walter White Jr in Breaking Bad and was a staunch disability rights campaigner

The actor RJ Mitte was a natural choice to play Walter White Jr, the son of Walter White (Bryan Cranston), the high school chemistry teacher turned meth dealer, in the television series Breaking Bad (2008-13), generally regarded as one of the greatest shows of the streaming era.

Walt Jr, also known as Flynn, was modelled by the show’s creator, Vince Gilligan, on the son of a friend who had cerebral palsy. Mitte had been diagnosed with cerebral palsy as an infant, and told the Guardian in 2015 that when he read the character summary he thought it “pretty much described me. ‘Dark hair, big eyebrows, cerebral palsy … ’ I was, like, ‘I have this covered.’”

American actor best known for his role as Salvatore ‘Big Pussy’ Bonpensiero in the US TV crime drama series The Sopranos

The character actor Vincent Pastore, who has died aged 80, made Italian mobster roles his speciality, most notably playing Salvatore “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero, one of the capos in The Sopranos. Although the character’s nickname came from his early career as a cat burglar, in a recent interview Pastore said the Soprano’s creator, David Chase, had written the part “for an actor who could play a tough guy but also could be sensitive. I saw Big Pussy as a man with a big heart.”

In the show, Pastore’s Pussy balanced the violent intensity of Tony Sirico’s Paulie Walnuts. “It was like sharing the camera with an elephant,” Pastore joked about the much smaller but intense actor.

Pioneering American aviator who was the oldest woman to fly into space aged 82 in 2021

As an aviator, Wally Funk, who has died aged 87, was a trailblazing pioneer for women, breaking barriers for eight decades of a remarkable career. “Aviation has been my whole life; I eat and breathe it,” she said in her 2020 memoir, Higher, Faster, Longer (written with Loretta Hall).

She earned her pilot’s licence as a teenager, at 20 was the US military’s first female flight instructor, in 1971 became the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) first female flight inspector, and three years later was the first woman instructor for the National Transport Safety Board (NTSB). But hanging over these accomplishments was her unfulfilled dream of becoming an astronaut.

A leading light of American TV comedy, directing sitcoms such as Friends, Frasier and almost every episode of Cheers

James Burrows, who has died aged 85, was one of the most influential figures in US television sitcoms for more than four decades. He was the co-creator and primary director of Cheers, one of America’s most beloved and successful sitcoms, which ran for 11 seasons between 1982 and 1993 and won 28 Primetime Emmy awards. Its final episode was second only to that of M*A*S*H as the most-watched of all time.

However, unlike producer/writers such as Nat Hiken, Norman Lear or Larry Gelbart, who had stamped their marks on previous generations, Burrows’ influence came entirely as a director. As such he was intimately involved in the creation of many shows, and enjoyed long runs on sitcoms such as the Cheers spin-off Frasier, Friends, and Will and Grace. For years he was the first-choice director of pilot episodes, used to sell programmes to the networks; he did almost 100 of them, including two versions of some, if the first produced only a lukewarm response.

Multi-award-winning writer best known for his speculative fiction, but whose novels and novellas also spanned genres from crime to historical

Dan Simmons, who has died aged 77, was a versatile, prolific and genre-stretching writer whose work embraced the definition of SF as speculative, rather than simply science, fiction. In fact, before he wrote the four massive space opera novels that became known as the Hyperion Cantos, he had already made his name as a writer of horror. His first novel, Song of Kali (1985), won the World Fantasy award; his next, Carrion Comfort (1989), won the Bram Stoker, Locus and British Fantasy awards.

Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion were originally one novel. Divided into two, each won a Locus award, while Hyperion also captured a Hugo, and Fall of Hyperion the British Science Fiction Association prize. His two Endymion novels, again originally one book (1996), finished the Hyperion series.

Mathematician whose work at the US Naval Weapons Laboratory was pivotal to the development of GPS

It was only late in life that the mathematician Gladys West, who has died aged 95, was recognised for her role in the development of today’s global positioning system, or GPS. She came to be thought of as another “hidden figure” – a reference to the 2016 book and subsequent film about three black women who worked at Nasa during the space race.

While West’s story may have been less dramatic – it took decades of painstaking work at the US Naval Weapons Laboratory for her to come up with the geodesic systems that would allow the precise measurements and mapping needed for the technology – her work nevertheless transformed modern life.