Who The Food World Lost In 2012 Slideshow

Jorge Herrera and Carl Magnus Lindgren: These chefs, from Heston Blumenthal's famous The Fat Duck restaurant, were visiting Hong Kong to host a private event, and were killed when their taxi collided with a bus.

Anthony Sedlak, 29 (left): This Canadian celebrity chef, best known as host of Food Network Canada's The Main, died from undisclosed causes in July.

Art Ginsburg, 81: Best known as Mr. Food, Ginsburg was known for his 90-second televised cooking lessons. A trained butcher who shunned haute cuisine in favor of simple preparations, he took an "anybody can do it" approach with a philosophy of "The less steps the better; the less ingredients the better."

Liu Jun, 38: This Chinese chef was visiting Australia, and decided to forage for mushrooms to prepare for himself and kitchen hand Tsou Hsiang for dinner. While he thought he was picking edible straw mushrooms, when in fact he picked the world's deadliest variety, the Death Cap mushroom. Both died soon after from liver failure. 

Sylvia Woods, 86: The force behind Harlem's legendary soul food restaurant Sylvia's, Woods opened the restaurant in 1962 and over the years it became a destination for politicians, celebrities, locals, and busloads of tourists alike.

Sergio Abramof, 56: This chef and restaurateur brought new life to Cleveland's dining scene through his two restaurants, Sergio's and Sarava, which incorporated flavors from his native Brazil.

Mario Ferrari, 80: Ferrari revolutionized the Nashville, Tenn., dining scene when he opened Mario's Ristorante, a fine-dining Italian restaurant that's been one of the city's finest for more than 40 years.

Carmela "Mama" Sbarro, 90: An immigrant from Naples, Sbarro founded the eponymous quick-service pizza chain (left) with husband Genarro in Brooklyn in 1956, and continued working there well into her '80s.

Robert Treboux, 87: Treboux owned one of New York's most famous restaurants, Le Veau d'Or. He honed his skills at La Pavillion, which revolutionized French cuisine in New York, and went on to open several highly regarded French restaurants before acquiring Le Veau d'Or in 1985. 

Guiseppe Quintarelli, 84: One of the world's great winemakers, he was known as "The Father of Amarone" for his legendary Amarone della Valpolicella Classico and Amarone Riserva (left).

Gil Wahlquist: Australia's first organic grape-grower and winemaker, Wahlquist, established Botobolar Vineyard in 1971 and is known as "the godfather of organic wine."

David Taub, 72: Taub is widely regarded as the man who singlehandedly expanded Americans' wine palate, introducing pinot grigio to the United States in 1977. His company, Palm Bay International, is one of the country's largest wine importers.

Peter Zwack, 85: This Hungarian liquor magnate protected his family's recipe for Unicum digestif from the Nazis during World War II, and later went onto be the Hungarian Ambassador to the U.S. in the 1990s.

Thomas Pastorius, 67: A lover of German beer, Pastorius brought that traditional style to Pittsburgh when he opened the Pennsylvania Brewing Company in the 1980s, building it and the adjoining restaurant by hand. Penn Pilsner grew to be a beloved local beer, and he also founded the Pennsylvania Microbrewers Festival in 1994.

Chaleo Yoovidhya: Yoovidhya was the inventor of Red Bull, which originated in Thailand in the 1970s and that went on to make him one of the richest men in the world.

Dan Evins, 76: Evins was the founder of Cracker Barrel, a chain of restaurants and country stores that began in 1969 at his family's gas station. It grew to 608 restaurants in 42 states.

Samuel Glazer, 89: The brains behind Mr. Coffee, the first automatic drip coffeemaker, made high-quality coffee easy to make at home, making 1972 the dividing line between the percolator and the automatic drip.

Murray Lender, 81: Lender revolutionized the bagel industry and introduced it to the masses by perfecting the process by which bagels from his family store could be baked in advance and then frozen. He sold the company to Kraft Foods in 1984, and in 2011 they made nearly 750 million bagels.

Felix Stehling, 85: Stehling started Taco Cabana as a small San Antonio taco stand and grew it into a huge Texas chain (left), with 162 locations and more than 4,300 employees. 

Marion Cunningham, 90: Cunningham convinced millions of novice cooks that they could accomplish something in the kitchen through her popular book Learning to Cook.

Nora Ephron (left): Ephron was a journalist, screenwriter, feminist, humorist, and food lover, and her autobiographical novel Heartburn was called a "novel with recipes," and her film Julie and Julia brought Julia Child back to life to be discovered by new audiences.