Oscar winning screenwriter Abby Mann, the writer of socially conscious scripts for movies and television and winner of the 1961 Academy Award for adapted screenplay for Judgment at Nuremberg has died, an official said on Friday.

An official of Writers Guild of America said Mann died on Tuesday. Abby Mann also won multiple Emmys, including one in 1973 for The Marcus-Nelson Murders , which created a maverick New York police detective named Theo Kojak. The film, starring Telly Savalas, was spun off into the long-running TV series Kojak .

In a career spanning more than 50 years as a writer and producer, Mann returned repeatedly to morally conscious themes, doing films for television on such subjects as Martin Luther King Jr, human rights advocate Simon Weisenthal & Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa.

Del Reisman, former Writers Guild of America, West, president & a long time friend of Abby Mann said, “Abby was brought along by great producers like Herbert Brodkin, but his passion was his own. From his earliest days as a writer, he was guided by a moral compass that never wavered”.