But Yousuf Karsh, that Canadian and that photographer stood apart in another more telling way.  He had met, and become intimate, with more than half the people on that list.

Kennedy, Einstein, Churchill, Picasso, Keller, Queen Elizabeth, Castro, Hemingway, Khrushchev, Rubenstein, Shaw, Trudeau, Chaplin, Casals, Gable, Wells.  All of them, and thousands more, achieved a measure of immortality through the lens of Yousuf Karsh, known for six decades around the world by the stamp on the back of his photographs -- Karsh of Ottawa.

Arguably the most famous Canadian in history, and certainly the most celebrated son of Ottawa, Karsh died yesterday at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, his home since leaving Ottawa in 1997.

Karsh, who was 93, died of complications following surgery in June to stop a bleeding bowel, Jerry Fielder, his agent and long-time friend, said last night.

For 60 years he was celebrated in the world's capitals by the world's greatest statement and artists -- people whose images he captured for the ages," Mr. Fielder said. "But in his heart, he was a son of Canada and Ottawa.  It was his home even after he left."

Karsh was born in Turkey in 1908, but as a 16 year old was sent by his family to Canada to escape persecution for his Armenian Heritage.  When he arrived in Quebec's Eastern Townships to live with his uncle, photographer George Nakash, his ambition was to become a doctor.

But that would soon change.  To raise money for medical school he worked in his uncle's studio, where he showed so much promise he was sent to Boston to apprentice with Nakash's old friend John Garo, a renowned portrait photographer.  It was there Karsh developed the tools that would become his trademark.

But it was a tough apprenticeship.  For several years, [three years] Karsh prepared platinum prints for his mentor, acted as receptionist, ran errands, cleaned the darkroom and during Prohibition even served gin to customers in flasks marked "nitric acid."

It was also in Boston, as a regular visitor to the city's galleries and museums and during evenings engrossed in art books at the public library, that he became entranced by the use of light and shadow and composition by the masters.

Working for Garo also offered Karsh his first encounters with high society.  As the preeminent portrait photographer on the East Coast, Garo frequently entertained political and social celebrities in his studio.  Karsh also accompanied him on assignments in Washington and New York.

By 1932, Karsh was ready to set out on his own and opened a studio on Sparks Street in Ottawa, where he remained for 40 years before moving to his more famous site in the Chateau Laurier.  There, he kept a studio until he retired in 1992. 

"I chose Canada because it gave me my first opportunity and I chose Ottawa because, as the capital, it was a crossroads that offered access to a wide range of subjects," he once said.

Eventually, as his fame grew, Karsh opened studios in New York and London for the convenience of his more celebrated clients.  But his most famous client was photographed in Ottawa in what was probably the most well chronicled photographic encounter in history.

In late 1941, British prime minister Winston Churchill addressed the Canadian Parliament, and Karsh set up his equipment in the Speaker's chambers to record one of the century's great leaders.

"He was in no mood for portraiture and two minutes were all that he would allow me," Karsh later wrote.  "Two niggardly minutes in which I must try to put on film a man who had already written or inspired a library of books, baffled all his biographers, filled all the world with his fame, and me, on this occasion, with dread."

Churchill marched into the room scowling, Karsh wrote, "regarding my camera as he might regard the German enemy."  His expressing suited Karsh just fine, but the cigar between his teeth seemed wrong for such an occasion.

"Instinctively, I removed the cigar.  At this the Churchillian scowl deepened, the head was thrust forward belligerently, and the hand placed on the hip in an attitude of anger."

There were plenty of other memorable moments ...

In the 1960's, after a photo shoot at the California home of starlet Anita Eckberg, the seductive actress invited him for a swim. "She took all her clothes off and asked me to come in ... and I did," he recalled in a 1995 interview.  Then typical if Mr. Karsh's playful humor, he added: "I had no bathing suit, and I certainly had no intention of going out to buy one."

A more sombre moment came in 1948 when Karsh went to see Albert Einstein at Princeton University.  With the world gripped by fears about the atomic bomb and tensions between the Soviet Union and the U.S., the photographer asked the Nobel-winning physicist what it all might mean to the world.

"He told me, 'We will no longer be able to listen to the music of Mozart if we don't keep our heads,'" Karsh remembered.  "He was deeply depressed by the prospect."

But the pictures Karsh spoke of with the most fondness are those he took the same year of Helen Keller, the American writer and advocate for the blind.  "I kissed her on the forehead and she blushed like a child," Karsh recalled. "Then she put her hands on my face and told me, 'I'm photographing you with my touch.'  It was among the most moving moments of my life."

Karsh often said the most important lesson he learned early in his career was that the "art" of photography was a combination of "observation" and "intuition."  As a result, before meeting with any subject Karsh prepared by devouring everything he could find about them.

An engaging, intelligent personality, he had a gift for disarming his subjects, for eliciting profound moods, for dismantling the walls that people erect between themselves and the camera -- for exposing, it seemed, their souls ... His late brother Malik Karsh, also a renowned photographer, once said, "People knew they had a master with them and they appreciated that opportunity," Malik explained.  "They gave him ... what he needed to know about them so he could render them in the best way possible."

In 1992, Karsh retired from photography and closed his studio at the Chateau Laurier.  His last picture was of U.S. president Bill Clinton, done shortly after his election in November of that year.  His biggest regret, Karsh said at the time, was missing the chance to photograph Chairman Mao.

While Karsh will be best remembered for his photographs of "those men and women who leave their mark on the world," as he once put it, he also took tens of thousands of photographs of ordinary people, many of them Ottawans.

His fee was always considerably higher than that charged by most other studios, but many of those who spent the extra money were later happy to have a personal record from the man who chronicled so many of the 20th century's great figures.

In late '97, Karsh left the Chateau Laurier and moved with his wife Estrellita, a former medical researcher from Chicago, to Boston, which he considered his "second home."

He loved to walk every day, and it simply got to the point where Ottawa winters were too much for him," Mr. Fielder said from Boston last night. "Down here it was possible to get out more often.  But if anyone thinks he lost his love, or devotion to Ottawa, they would be very wrong."

Karsh's work is displayed in galleries and museums around the world, and when the National Portrait Gallery of Canada opens in Ottawa in 2005, one of its rooms will be devoted to his photographs.  The national Archives holds his complete collection and his photo equipment is in the Museum of Science and Technology. 

In addition to his wife Estrellita, who he married in 1962, Karsh is survived by one of his four brothers, Salim, 78, a retired clothing store manager who lives in Quebec.  His brother Malik died last year and another brother, Jamil, a retired Connecticut physician, died last week at 82.

Karsh's first wife, Solange, who he met while photographing an Ottawa Little Theater rehearsal in the '30's, died of cancer in '60.  There were no children in either marriage.

A private burial service will be held Thursday at Notre Dame Cemetery in Ottawa ...