As the blog of record in computational complexity, we like to bring attention to those in the community who have left us. When we learn of someone in our field who has died, Bill and I will talk to each other and decide whether we should do a social media post or a full blog post, and who should write it, Bill, me, or someone else. In fact, if I call Bill, he'll often answer the phone with "who died?"
We also remember those who passed away during the year in our end-of-year post.
One challenge is how we actually know when somebody has died. Consider Michael Rabin. His death was announced on Wikipedia based on the following announcement in Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper.
♦ Haaretz Obit (Translated by Google)That's a pretty simple obituary for a very famous computer scientist. Rabin is a common name in Israel, and there easily could have been another professor named Michael Rabin somewhere in the country. Every mention of Michael Rabin's death that I saw was just citing the Wikipedia article, nothing from Tal Rabin or some other source that cited the family.
By the time Bill put up the first Rabin post on April 22, we figured that had our Michael Rabin not died, someone would have come forward about it.
Tony Hoare is a different story, where our blog was one of the first to break the news. I heard from two separate people that they had heard from the family that he had passed away. It helped that I was in Oxford at the time, where Hoare spent much of his career.
And too often a theoretical computer scientist passes away but the news never reaches us and we don't remember them. It's always sad when someone passes, but it is a good opportunity to remember how they helped shape our field. But we need your help to know when someone has passed away. So if you know someone in our community has passed away, please let us know, and how you know, so that we can know we know.
By Lance Fortnow
As the blog of record in computational complexity, we like to bring attention to those in the community who have left us. When we learn of someone in our field who has died, Bill and I will talk to each other and decide whether we should do a social media post or a full blog post, and who should write it, Bill, me, or someone else. In fact, if I call Bill, he'll often answer the phone with "who died?"
We also remember those who passed away during the year in our end-of-year post.
One challenge is how we actually know when somebody has died. Consider Michael Rabin. His death was announced on Wikipedia based on the following announcement in Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper.
| Haaretz Obit (Translated by Google) |
That's a pretty simple obituary for a very famous computer scientist. Rabin is a common name in Israel, and there easily could have been another professor named Michael Rabin somewhere in the country. Every mention of Michael Rabin's death that I saw was just citing the Wikipedia article, nothing from Tal Rabin or some other source that cited the family.
By the time Bill put up the first Rabin post on April 22, we figured that had our Michael Rabin not died, someone would have come forward about it.
Tony Hoare is a different story, where our blog was one of the first to break the news. I heard from two separate people that they had heard from the family that he had passed away. It helped that I was in Oxford at the time, where Hoare spent much of his career.
And too often a theoretical computer scientist passes away but the news never reaches us and we don't remember them. It's always sad when someone passes, but it is a good opportunity to remember how they helped shape our field. But we need your help to know when someone has passed away. So if you know someone in our community has passed away, please let us know, and how you know, so that we can know we know.