R.I.P. Paul E Gray ~ MIT President Emeritus...

Sad to hear MIT President Emeritus Paul Edward Gray has passed away at age 85. He was the Institute's iconic leader during my undergrad days, himself an alumnus and an exemplar of actual MIT Values. I got to know him much more through our Technology Breakfast entrepreneurship events, his work with MIT Planning Director Emeritus Bob Simha on Kendall Square residences for university affiliates, and his dozen-plus guest appearances in our Understanding MIT seminar.

R.I.P. Ootje Oxenaar ~ Designed NL Banknotes...

Sad to hear that Ootje Oxenaar, the graphic designer of beautiful Dutch money and RISD instructor, has passed away at 87. I particularly liked his Sunflower design for the 50 Guilder note, which was NL orange plus harkened to Van Gogh and was a complete contrast to monolithic American currency at the time... 24Oranges spotted this self retrospective video by Oxenaar...

R.I.P. Peter Spier ~ Epic Dutch Inspiring Illustrator

Richard Sandomir in the NYTimes shares the sad news that inspirational illustrator Peter Spier has passed away at 89 from congestive heart failure. My very earliest favorite book -- i.e. when I was a toddler and my parents read to me -- was about Hendrika the Cow Who Fell in the Canal but as a teen I really spent endless hours on Of Dikes and Windmills. Amazing stuff about Dutch history, epic civil engineering, and the power of nature!

R.I.P. Eugene Lang ~ Financed "Dream" Tuition!

James Hagerty in the WSJ writes of Eugene Lang's passing at 98 and his spontaneous philanthropic promise at a Harlem elementary school graduation to underwrite college tuition for all who finished high school. This begat the "I Have A Dream" Foundation which to-date has supported thousands of collegiates. R.I.P.

R.I.P. Paul Kangas ~ "The Best of Good Buys!"

Alas, Paul Kangas, the Walter Cronkite of business broadcasting has passed away. He started the broadcasting of business info. Indeed, others, like CNBC, “all started mimicking us.” “But as my wife, who is an artist, says,” he added, “the original is always the best.” I personally loved his panache and his epic and memorable signature signoff...

“Wishing all of you the best of good buys”

R.I.P. Hans Rosling ~ Edutainer Extraordinaire

Pancreatic cancer has laid low Hans Rosling, the Gapminder co-founder and my favorite public health statistician and data edutainer extraordinaire.  He has many remarkable TED talks and other videos online, but I personally favor his appearance at TEDIndia speaking on Asia's Rise where he compares global growth over 200 years and predicts exactly when India and China converge with the rich!

R.I.P. Jay W Forrester ~ Sociodynamics Pioneer...

Alas, RIP, Jay W Forrester. Through his panache, presence, and personal feedback (to me!) and through his inventing core memory & CNC machines, the Whirlwind real-time digital computer, Sage air defense network, Lincoln Labs, building up the MIT Sloan School, teaching Professors Ed Roberts, John Sterman, Donella Meadows, Jurgen Randers, etc, et al, founding the System Dynamics discipline, and providing essential inspiration to dozens of MIT alumcos -- i.e. his students were founders of Digital Equipment Corp (DEC), MITRE, 3Com, Pugh-Roberts, Patni Computer Systems (birth of Indian offshoring), Ventana, and many, many more -- plus inspirational role in creating SimCity, pioneering management flight simulators, e.g. creating the Beer Game, writing Industrial Dynamics, Urban Dynamics, World Dynamics and provoking LImits to Growth, C-ROADS simulators, etc, etc, Jay Forrester remains an awesome and iconoclastic inventor, a personal inspiration to me and thousands more, and one of MIT's most epic and innovative heroes. I'm so sad at losing him but so happy to have had him too...

R.I.P. Oliver Sacks ~ Neurologist, Inspiration...

Sad to hear that cancer has taken Dr Oliver Sacks at age 82. Like so many others, I was inspired by his curiosity and engagement with patients -- and his capacity to tell their stories and the story of the human condition.  What came as a later surprise was his willingness to discuss his own demons, including a severe shyness, face blindness, and "staggering bouts of pharmacological experimentation" in his youth.

R.I.P. Nicholas Winton ~ Rescuer of WWII Kids++

Sad to hear Sir Nicholas Winton has passed in his sleep at 106 years. He's one of the few who acted -- both at-scale and by-all-means-necessary -- to save children, mostly Jewish, caught up in Nazi craziness in the early phases of WWII.  And he did so quietly -- and quasi-legally -- but totally morally.  Unsung, he, with the help of his own mother, and colleagues Beatrice Wellington, Doreen Warriner, Trevor Chadwick and others in Prague, managed to organize the rescue of several trainloads totaling 669 children destined for Nazi concentration camps. A last train was stopped by the next escalation in fighting -- most (if not all) those ~200+ children died.  No one knew any of this until pretty recently.  Beyond his WWII efforts, he also cared about the elderly and infirm, setting up homes to support those in need.  And most recently, his story has been shared widely.  All together, Winton was a truly extraordinary and epic hero!

R.I.P. Lee Kwan Yew ~ Singapore City-Statesman

Strongman Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore has passed away at age 91. Leader of the modern city-state, Lee's achievements are perhaps best summed up by his autobiographical book title From Third World to First and the facts from this Economist infographic...

R.I.P. Leonard Nimoy ~ Live Long and Prosper...

Alas Leonard Nimoy has passed away at 83 of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which he attributed to years of smoking cigs. Born and raised in Boston's West End by immigrant Jews from Soviet Ukraine, he's perhaps best remembered for his enduring portrayal of the mostly logical half-Vulcan Mr Spock on Star Trek, where his signature hand-gesture emerged and also the tagline which inspired me and so many others -- "Live Long and Prosper"

Je Suis Charlie ~ Keep Fighting Intolerant Evil...

Gunmen of unknown origin or affiliation shouting "Allāhu Akbar" -- meaning "God is great" in Arabic -- slaughtered a dozen people at and near offices of satire magazine publisher Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

This is absolutely unacceptable.

We must keep fighting for modern, civilized human rights -- freedoms such as life, liberty, and speech, including the right to mock and laugh at stupid religious ideas and spoof any so-called "prophet".  In solidarity, R.I.P. Charb, Cabu, and other victims... P.S. See fellow cartoonist's drawn tributes, eg David Pope...
P.P.S. Yes, it's now clear that our entire planet Earth is full of free-thinking and rational people who reject violent virulent swine... P.P.P.S. The perpetrators of this vicious and unforgivable crime are said to be: Said Kouachi, born in 1980, Cherif Kouachi, born in 1982. If you know or see them, beware of the allegations and report them to authorities. (Addendum: They're now dead.)
P.P.P.P.S. And all this I say knowing that Charlie Hebdo has represented uncompelling aspects of the political spectrum, from my point of view. But I absolutely respect their right to spew their spleen. As Evelyn Beatrice Hall wrote: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
P.P.P.P.P.S. This includes all of these "blasphemous" cartoons.

R.I.P. Edward Brooke ~ Black GOP Mass Senator

Very sad to hear that the groundbreaking Edward Brooke has passed away at age 95. He was not only the first African American popularly elected to the US Senate but did so as a Republican and a self-described "creative moderate" in Massachusetts. Read his Open Christmas Letter to the Racially Divided City of Boston from 1974.

R.I.P. Ralph Baer ~ Father of TV Video Games

Kokatu and Gamasutra report the sad news that Ralph Baer, widely considered the father of video games, has passed away at age 92.

"A renowned inventor, and holder of over 150 patents, Baer's most famous work was designing the machine that would become the Magnavox Odyssey, the world's very first home video games console. Every console and handheld that's come since, well, you can trace it all back to the Odyssey."

R.I.P. Kay Stratton ~ MIT's Gracious First Lady

The lovely and kind Catherine “Kay” Stratton, wife of MIT’s 11th President and a wonderfully gracious first lady, has alas passed away at age 100. I met her during my grad studies when she shared how she and her husband connected both newly arrived and senior faculty and linked interesting people with one another through regular dinner gatherings at the President's house. Mrs Stratton stayed very active well beyond her formal duties. Indeed, as MIT's News Office reports...

"In 1988, Stratton created the “Aging Successfully” lecture series at MIT to explore health topics of concern especially -- but not exclusively -- to an aging population. MIT created a Lecture on Critical Issues series in her honor in 1994, which has included such varied topics as Internet security, population growth, control of nuclear weapons, and microfinance."

She remains an inspiration for those of us seeking to make MIT a welcoming and gloriously creative place.

R.I.P. Narendra Patni ~ Father of IT Outsourcing

I'm very sad to discover today that MIT Sloan alumnus Narendra Patni passed away this past June.  Together with his wife Poonam and brothers, Narendra founded Patni Computer Systems, the first of the Indian IT outsourcing firms and an inspiration to many including Narayana Murthy who worked for Patni before leaving with his software team to start Infosys. The Globe's Robert Weisman first wrote in 2004 of the Patni's offshoring revolution starting in a Central Square apartment in 1972 and beginnings of operations in Pune, India in 1973. Overall, it's a epic saga and his passing is a real loss for us all.

R.I.P. Hal Finney ~ Cryptocoder Extropian...

WIRED's Andy Greenberg writes Bitcoin’s Earliest Adopter Is Cryonically Freezing His Body to See the Future...

"Hal Finney, the renowned cryptographer, coder, and bitcoin pioneer, died Thursday morning at the age of 58 after five years battling ALS. He will be remembered for a remarkable career that included working as the number-two developer on the groundbreaking encryption software PGP in the early 1990s, creating one of the first “remailers” that presaged the anonymity software Tor, and -- more than a decade later -- becoming one of the first programmers to work on bitcoin’s open source code; in 2009, he received the very first bitcoin transaction from Satoshi Nakamoto. Now Finney has become an early adopter of a far more science fictional technology: human cryopreservation, the process of freezing human bodies so that they can be revived decades or even centuries later." [...] Fran Finney says that her husband had no illusions about the certainty of his resurrection. But until his final moments, he put his faith in the progress of technology. “He never said to me, ‘I will come back.’ But he told me, ‘I hope to be back.’"

Photographer Max Gerber captured Hal and Fran last year...

R.I.P. Sheik Umar Khan ~ Sierra Leone Ebola Doc

Exceedingly sad to hear that Sierra Leonean Dr Sheik Umar Khan, one of the leading fighters against epidemic Ebola, has also succumbed to that deadly virus after treating over 100 afflicted countrymen. This just underscores that this currently West African-centered situation is in fact a global public health emergency. More must be done ASAP.

R.I.P. Peter Glaser ~ Solar Power Satelliteer...

Sad to read that visionary engineer Peter Glaser has passed away at age 90. Glaser worked for nearly a half-century at ADL, the pioneering technology & management consultancy, but his big passion was satellite-mounted solar panels which would beam power down to ground.

R.I.P. Kevin Brooks ~ Storyteller & Adventurer...

Tragic to hear that Kevin Brooks has passed away after fighting a fast, cruel cancer. Media Lab alumnus, storyteller, adventurer, friend, and especially a deeply engaged mentor to next generations, his joie de vivre will be missed but the high bar he set long remembered.