from Yair Weiss

I'd like to reinforce two themes that have come up in the previous messages: Sam's generosity and his enthusiasm.

I remember that sometime around 1998 I received email from researchers at CalTech who were interested in my results on loopy belief propagation. They were well outside my area and I was surprised they had even heard of what I was doing. I soon learned that Sam was responsible, and over the years I have seen Sam do this again and again: whenever he thinks a result is cool he gets excited about it and tells the whole world. Needless to say, many of us do this for our own results, but Sam was perfectly happy to advertise other people's results with the same infectious enthusiasm.

I remember sitting next to him on the bus from Vancouver to Whistler in 2001 and telling him about an ICA algorithm that Eero Simconelli had told me about during the main meeting. Sam whipped out his laptop, implemented the algorithm and had very soon posted it on his web page with the headline " ICA in two lines of MATLAB! "

To Aya, Orli and Meredith, "SheLo Tedoo od tsaar" -- may you never experience more sorrow.

I will miss him deeply.