Scholar

With tonight's debut of Gideon Oliver (Channel 6, 9 p.m.), The ABC Mystery Movie will have presented all three of its entries. Following Peter Falk in Columbo and Burt Reynolds in B. L. Stryker, Louis Gossett's challenge was to make something different out of his character, arc haeologist/crime-solver Gideon Oliver. This evening's episode demonstrates that Oliver is different, all right, but tonight's plot is simply appalling. As was true of the first edition of Reynolds' Stryker, this initial Oliver spends a lot of time introducing us to this character.

Barbara J. Lowery, 64, associate provost at the University of Pennsylvania, died Thursday of ovarian cancer at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Lowery had been a longtime resident of Villanova. A scholar and researcher, Dr. Lowery had been a member of the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing since 1970. Her research focused on understanding stress responses of people who were physically ill. She was a consultant to several universities, including Vanderbilt, Columbia, and the University of Hawaii.

After he played the terminally inhibited butler in The Remains of the Day, Anthony Hopkins had everyone convinced that there was nothing left to be said about emotional isolation. He added a great deal more in his memorably moving partnership with Debra Winger in Richard Attenborough's Shadowlands. The 1993 film is a study in contrasts - between the flesh and the spirit, the intellect and the heart. Hopkins plays C.S. Lewis, an outwardly contented Oxford don famed for his extracurricular writings as much as his scholarship.

Alvin Z. Rubinstein, 74, of Bryn Mawr, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, died Tuesday at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania of complications from a stroke. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Professor Rubinstein, who was to retire from Penn at the end of this semester, was stricken Dec. 6 while dining in the faculty lounge shortly after teaching the final class of his career. A leading scholar in the field of East-West relations, Russian foreign policy, conflict in the Third World, and national-security affairs, Professor Rubinstein was frequently sought for his views by journalists, policy-makers and historians.

Samuel T. Lachs, 74, a religious scholar, college professor and rabbi, died Sunday of cancer at his home in Haverford. Known for his intellectual passion, Dr. Lachs served for two decades as chairman of the department of the history of religion at Bryn Mawr College. A key interest was in the Talmudic-Midrashic literature, the ancient rabbinic writings in Hebrew and Aramaic that form the basis of traditional Judaism. Besides studying them in that light, he and other scholars have also examined the literature to shed light on the roots of the New Testament.

Peter A. Tasch had an enthusiasm for an 18th-century dramatist a bit more obscure than Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. In 1972, Bucknell University Press published Mr. Tasch's work The Dramatic Cobbler: The Life and Works of Isaac Bickerstaff. A 1974 review in the journal Modern Philology declared that Bickerstaff was the enigmatic theatrical hack whose Love in a Village was the most popular comic opera of the 18th century. Mr. Tasch, 76, of Germantown, chairman of the English department at Temple University from 1988 to 1990, died of multiple system atrophy Sunday, July 25, at Pennsylvania Hospital.

Elijah Anderson, one of the nation?s most influential scholars in the field of urban inequality, will become professor of sociology at Yale University on July 1, university officials said Wednesday. "Professor Anderson is the most respected and accomplished sociologist of the black urban community," said Yale Provost Andrew D. Hamilton. "We are thrilled that the leading expert in an area of such social and political importance will be conducting his research and teaching at Yale. " Anderson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, was the author of the classic work "A Place on the Corner: A Study of Black Street Corner Men. " Anderson has won numerous awards and written and edited numerous articles, books, book chapters and reports on the black experience, including the introduction to the republication of "The Philadelphia Negro," by W.E.B.

Reynolds Price, 77, poet, novelist, biblical scholar, and linguist, died Thursday after a heart attack Sunday. While compiling an impressive list of literary achievements, he served for more than 50 years as a professor of English at Duke University - although, when he began, he thought it would be for only three years. Born in Macon, N.C., Mr. Price graduated summa cum laude from Duke, was a Rhodes scholar, and studied at Merton College, Oxford, with teachers such as W.H. Auden. He returned to the United States and got, to his disappointment, a three-year terminal position at Duke, in Durham, N.C., in 1958.

Rachel Copare has ended a remarkable family tradition of excellence in soccer and academics in grand style. A senior midfielder at Schalick, Copare was named to the National Soccer Coaches Association of America girls' high school scholar all-American team. She will be honored at a luncheon Jan. 15 in Baltimore as part of the association's convention. This story has a familiar ring to it. Rachel's sister Sara, now a registered nurse, won the same award in high school. Soccer and academics have been the lifeblood of the Copare family.

Derk Bodde, 94, the first American Fulbright scholar and a professor of Chinese studies at the University of Pennsylvania for 37 years, died Nov. 3 at Stapeley in Germantown, a Quaker retirement home where he lived for 15 years. He lived in Germantown for more than 30 years. Mr. Bodde (pronounced BAH-da) was a Sinologist - a scholar dedicated to making Chinese history, customs, language and law understandable to the Western world. For 20 years he worked on a translation of two massive volumes of Fung Yu-lan's A History of Chinese Philosophy (Princeton, 1934 and 1953)