Mr Spock’s final frontier

Actor Leonard Nimoy died yesterday, aged 83. US president Obama described Nimoy’s Mr Spock as ‘cool, logical, big-eared and level-headed, the centre of Star Trek’s optimistic, inclusive vision of humanity’s future’.

Tributes have been paid to former Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy, who died yesterday, aged 83.

The actor’s wife, Susan Bay Nimoy, told the New York Times that he died of end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Nimoy came to international fame playing Mr Spock, the half- human, half-Vulcan first officer of the Starship Enterprise in the 1960s sci-fi series and its various film and television spin-offs.

Born to Jewish immigrant parents in Boston, Massachusetts, Nimoy also released five albums and worked behind the camera, directing Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and the 1987 comedy Three Men and a Baby.

Nimoy’s co-star William Shatner, Nasa, and US president Barack Obama all paid tribute to the actor yesterday.

“Long before being nerdy was cool, there was Leonard Nimoy,” said Obama, who “loved Spock”. “Leonard was a lifelong lover of the arts and humanities, a supporter of the sciences, generous with his talent and his time. And of course, Leonard was Spock. Cool, logical, big-eared and level-headed, the centre of Star Trek’s optimistic, inclusive vision of humanity’s future.”

Patrick Steward, who played Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, tweeted: “I was lucky to spend many happy, inspiring hours with him. He won’t be forgotten.”