Divorced. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 54, Nobel-prizewinning Russian novelist; and Natalya Alexeyevna Reshetovskaya, fiftyish; after 24 years of marriage (three of separation), no children; in Ryazan, U.S.S.R. Natalya's settlement is said to be one-third of the writer's $80,000 Nobel money. Solzhenitsyn, after a brief waiting period, will be free to marry Natalya Svetlova, 34, the mother of his two sons.

Died. William Benton, 72, former Democratic Senator from Connecticut and publisher of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; in Manhattan. Benton helped work his way through Yale as a high-stake auction-bridge player, later gave up a Rhodes scholarship and disappointed family hopes for a ministerial career to become a salesman, then an advertising copywriter. In the firm he established with Chester Bowles, he pioneered in radio advertising and programs that used studio audiences, and retired a millionaire from Benton & Bowles at 35. In 1943, as a vice president of the University of Chicago, he acquired the faltering Encyclopaedia Britannica from Sears, Roebuck and put up $100,000 of his own money as working capital to allay fears of the school's worried trustees. Under his stewardship, the encyclopedia's sales zoomed during the next two decades from $3,000,000 to $125 million, netting the university $25 million in royalties. Benton was a staunch liberal and a bitter foe of Joe McCarthy in his Senate days (1949-53). An early UNESCO supporter, he ultimately served the organization as Lyndon Johnson's ambassador.

Died. Lauritz Melchior, 82, golden-voiced Wagnerian tenor of New York's Metropolitan Opera for 24 seasons; of a liver ailment; in Santa Monica, Calif. (see Music).

Died. Robert Cushman Murphy, 85, expert on oceanic birds and sea-life conservation; in Stony Brook, Long Island. In 1912 Murphy shipped aboard an Antarctic whaler as assistant navigator, and brought back bird, plant and fish specimens never before seen in the U.S. Among the discoveries of his 61-year career were the skeleton of the New Zealand moa, a flightless bird of centuries ago, and the cahow, a sea bird believed to have been extinct since the 17th century. As bird curator at Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History, he sailed on more than a dozen ocean expeditions, wrote nearly 600 articles and ten books (among them, Logbook for Grace, Oceanic Birds of South America), had two mountains and several creatures named after him, including a bird and the Eurymetopus imurphyi, a louse.

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