[Read all Times reporting on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. | Sign up for the weekly Science Times email.]

They designed modules, examined rocks, wrote a poem and, of course, put a foot down on lunar soil. Thousands of people played a role before, during and after the event, if such a banal word can be used for the gargantuan project to land humans on the moon. The New York Times published obituaries about many of them; here is a sample.

The Moon Walker