Thanks Kaj. I've sent Risto's email address privately.
Thanks for getting in touch and for sharing more about Kalevi. I didn't know about Pirkko. It must be very sad for their children to lose both parents within a few months. Please do share the obituaries here when they are available. Oscar On Friday 28 June 2024 at 17:35:48 UTC+1 Kaj Malm wrote: > Dear Oscar Benjamin, > > > I hope this mail will find you although I do not know your personal > address. > > > I was the first doctoral student and later a colleague of Kalevi Suominen > at the University of Helsinki, so it goes without saying that I share your > sadness and all the positive thoughts about him I find on the SymPy pages. > > > Kalevi became a member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters at > the tender age of 33 years, and therefore the Academy will publish an > obituary in due time, both in Finnish and in English. Most likely we have > to wait for that until next year, and meanwhile I would like to write a > less technical version to be published by the leading Finnish newspaper, > possibly together with other students and colleagues of Kalevi. The problem > is that I left the University of Helsinki decades ago, and thus I do not > know how to get in touch with his children (his wife Pirkko passed away > just a few months before he did). Legally speaking an obituary can be > published without the consent of the family, but I find it polite to inform > the family and I would also like to check some facts about Kalevi. > > > In conclusion I'll ask you for a favor: could you be kind enough to send > me the email address of Risto Suominen (by pm)? > > > > Yours sincerely > > Kaj Malm > > bkmmalm(at)gmail.com > > > > tiistai 26. maaliskuuta 2024 klo 15.13.00 UTC+2 gauravdhi...@gmail.com > kirjoitti: > >> I feel really sad hearing that, he was my mentor in both the GSoC >> projects I did with SymPy, it always felt really nice talking to him. He >> was the one who sat down with me over gitter and helped me understand pdb >> (python debugger) on terminal. Over the course of initial few years >> (2015-2017), we often had some informal chats about his son visiting him, >> or what has been upto currently, even his habit of not updating his ubuntu >> distribution (he was on 12.04 LTS even in 2017). I never got the chance to >> meet him in person, I really have some good memories of working with him, >> it just breaks my heart to hear of him being no more. >> >> The last I spoke with him was in 2021, I wish I had somehow kept in touch >> with him more often and visited him maybe. >> >> Because of a glitch in github, even today when I receive notifications >> from github of comments made by someone else, it still shows to me that >> those comments are made by Kaveli Suominen himself, doesn't matter what >> repo it is, its been the case for me from the last 5 years (see screenshot >> below): >> >> May he rest in peace. >> >> Regards, >> Gaurav Dhingra >> >> >> On Wednesday, March 13, 2024 at 8:41:37 AM UTC+5:30 anderso...@gmail.com >> wrote: >> >>> Hello All, >>> >>> This is very sad to hear for me. Being someone who worked with him for >>> like 6 - 8 months (Oct 2021 - Apr 2022 while I used to contribute to the >>> Series & Limits module and May 2022 - Aug 2022 while Kalevi was my GSoC >>> Mentor) , I can say that this is a huge loss for the community. If you see >>> my PRs from Oct 2021 to Apr 2022, almost all have been merged by Kalevi >>> cause we were trying to solve some fundamental issues in the series module >>> and the code for that was written back in 2008 - 2010, so it needed some >>> special attention and refactoring. I always felt that his reviews on my PR >>> were so spot on. >>> >>> This also led to my GSoC project where we tried addressing more relevant >>> issues. I was in touch with him over chat for about 3 months on a daily >>> basis, though sadly I never met him over video. I remember we used to >>> brainstorm on approaches to solve an issue and as usual he had and approach >>> and I had a counter approach which I felt would work out too. So I used to >>> challenge him and he always gave me the freedom to try (and I think he knew >>> I would fail) and then get back to his approach. Specially on this PR ( >>> https://github.com/sympy/sympy/pull/23592) . This happened a couple of >>> times after which I knew that whatever he says is backed by his experience >>> as a SymPy developer and I shouldn't be challenging him. >>> >>> Hence being someone who got a chance to work with him closely, I can say >>> this is huge loss for the sympy community. I know a couple PRs where Kalevi >>> had an approach in mind and had mentioned it but nobody tried addressing >>> it, for eg >>> https://github.com/sympy/sympy/pull/25756#issuecomment-1864176011 . I >>> shall try looking into this whenever I have time. >>> >>> Regards, >>> Anutosh Bhat >>> >>> On Sunday, March 10, 2024 at 10:01:43 PM UTC+5:30 Oscar wrote: >>> >>>> Hi all SymPy community, >>>> >>>> It is with great sadness that I bring the news that Kalevi Suominen >>>> (@jksuom on GitHub) passed away on the 4th of March. Kalevi's son >>>> Risto passed on this news to me and some others by email yesterday. >>>> >>>> I never met Kalevi in person but we had many conversations online over >>>> many years. Kalevi was an outstanding SymPy contributor and was >>>> involved with the project long before me and so there are others here >>>> who have known him much longer than I have. Kalevi guided many SymPy >>>> contributors and supervised many GSOC students over many years. >>>> Looking in the git history his earliest commit was from almost exactly >>>> 10 years ago. >>>> >>>> Personally I learnt a huge amount from Kalevi and I am very grateful >>>> for the time he took to teach me and others and to guide the project >>>> generally. Kalevi's expertise in many areas of Mathematics and across >>>> the full depth of many parts of the SymPy codebase was unmatched >>>> within the community. >>>> >>>> Interacting through GitHub I guess that many of us did not realise >>>> that Kalevi's health was in decline. He continued to be involved >>>> including most recently reviewing a pull request just 6 weeks ago. A >>>> few weeks ago he sent me some files with what he was most recently >>>> working on but was no longer able to finish. I will try to complete >>>> that work and submit it as Kalevi's final pull request. >>>> >>>> Kalevi's passing is a huge loss to SymPy but I don't want to dwell on >>>> that. Instead I invite those of us who have known Kalevi to share >>>> their thoughts and memories here. >>>> >>>> Oscar >>>> >>> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sympy" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sympy+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sympy/048c8a4e-dabc-4b97-a4e2-b12034a336b6n%40googlegroups.com.
