DIED. Minnie Riperton, 30, pop singer and songwriter, best known for the international hit Lovin' You (1975); of cancer; in Los Angeles.

DIED. Robert B. Woodward, 62, a Harvard professor for four decades who won the 1965 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work in organic synthesis; of a heart attack; in Cambridge, Mass. A child prodigy who experimented in his basement lab at home, Woodward entered M.I.T. at 16, got his B.S. at 19 and Ph.D. at 20. In 1937 he joined the Harvard faculty and in 1944 synthesized the antimalarial drug quinine, a project he had worked on since his teens. He then synthesized cholesterol, cortisone, several antibiotics and chlorophyll and, in 1972, vitamin B12, at that time the most intricate molecule ever constructed in a laboratory.

DIED. Michael Wilding, 66, dapper English actor and second husband of Elizabeth Taylor; after a fall in his home; in Chichester, England. His success during the 1940s and '50s in light comedies (Spring in Park Lane) brought him to Hollywood, where he married Taylor, 19, and, he said, "watched my career turn to ashes." Divorced after five years and two children, Wilding returned briefly to the London stage before becoming a talent agent.

DIED. Carmine Galante, 69, underworld boss; in a hail of gunfire blasts by ski-masked assassins as he lunched at a restaurant; in Brooklyn, N.Y. (see NATION).

DIED. Cornelia Otis Skinner, 78, gifted monologist, actress and humorist; of a stroke; in New York City. Cornelia was weaned on her actor father's renditions of Shakespeare, and made her Broadway debut with him in 1921. Too tall and gawky to play ingenues, she built her stage career slowly, tirelessly touring the U.S. heartlands and Britain in monodramas she wrote and staged herself. Her self-deprecating humor and satirical wit found an outlet in light verse and anecdotal magazine pieces, plays and books, the best known of which was her 1942 travelogue, Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, written with Emily Kimbrough. She was a popular guest on radio, television and the lecture circuit, thanks largely to her flair for the bon mot. Sample: "A woman's virtue is man's greatest invention."

DIED. Arthur Fiedler, 84, beloved maestro of the Boston Pops for a half-century; of a heart attack; in Brookline, Mass, (see Music).

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