Madeleine was a grand dame, who spoke with the diction and drama of a Shakespearean actor on a variety of subjects ranging from the persecution of physicians by government to the virtues of learning how to fly a plane and shoot a gun.

A true Renaissance woman, she was an attorney and doctor who wrote books on women in Medieval Europe, Medieval cooking, and the hero in Arthurian romances. At the time of her passing she was planning to publish her latest book, Who Owns Your Body? During the wildfires in California several years ago, she was on the fireline, fighting the blaze and protecting lives and property. She later spoke at an Atlas Society/Objectivist Center Summer Seminar about how outrageous environmental regulations helped foster those fires and allowed them to spread. Her op-ed for us on "The Government's Envy Engine" documented how the federal government uses bounties to encourage the destroyers of wealth to loot the creators. In recent years Madeleine designed her own mountaintop house, which is located north of San Diego. (See photos at: http://www.objectivistcenter.org/cth--1657- Madeleine-Cosman-RIP.aspx.)

While often controversial, her talks always educated or elicited thought. On February 2, 2005, she spoke at the TAS/TOC Capitol Hill celebration of Ayn Rand's centenary on "Rand's Great Ideas." (This and many of her Summer Seminar talks can be found at our Objectivism Store.)

The family asks that donations in Madeleine's memory be made either to the Scleroderma Foundation (www.scleroderma.org) or the Wake Up America Foundation (www.thewakeupamericafoundation.com).

There will be a memorial service for Madeleine at her house at 20088 Mount Israel Place, Escondido, California on April 8th at 2:00pm. Please RSVP to her family at mcosman@hotmail.com. (Parking is limited on the mountaintop location so if you plan to come, you might want to carpool with others.)

Our thoughts go out to her family and friends. She will be missed.