Gene Golub, 1932-2007

Having just recently gotten an appreciation for what Golub has contributed (from classes, books) and how active he's continued to be (talking to profs who've recently written papers with him) it was wildly unexpected to see this forwarded to my inbox this morning:

From: Cleve Moler 
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 17:55:42 -0500
Subject: Gene Golub, 1932 - 2007

Gene Golub, founder of the NA Digest, passed away today, Friday, November 16,
at the Stanford University Hospital.  He was 75 years old.

Gene returned home to Stanford recently from a trip to Hong Kong.  He was
planning to leave again Tuesday on another trip, this one to Zurich where the
ETH was to honor him with a special degree.  Instead, Sunday night he went to
the emergency room because he was "feeling lousy".  On Tuesday, he was found
to have AML, acute myelogenous leukemia, a form of cancer that affects the
white blood cells.  This is a potentially curable disease and he was expecting
to begin chemotherapy today.   But serious complications developed suddenly
over night.

I was able to see Gene for an hour last night and he was in reasonably good
spirits.  Mike Saunders was trying to get Gene's laptop to use dial-up over
the hospital's phone system because Gene said he was a couple of days behind
on his email.  I was planning to get a wireless card for his machine today.
None of us had any idea how suddenly the situation would worsen.

The Stanford iCME students have created a memorial blog at
http://genehgolub.blogspot.com.

Our community has lost its foremost member.  He was a valued colleague and
friend.  Goodbye, Gene.

 -- Cleve Moler