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From: Eugenia Cheng <echeng4@saic.edu>
To: Philip Scott <scpsg@uottawa.ca>, categories@mta.ca
Subject: Re: Pieter Hofstra
Date: Thu, 5 May 2022 11:10:56 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <E1nonuC-0003RW-1e@rr.mta.ca> (raw)

I am devastated by the death of my dear friend and colleague
Pieter Hofstra.

Pieter was one of my closest friends in the world. It is one of the
extraordinary things about being a mathematician, that one becomes
close friends with people even without ever having lived in the same
place as them.

I met Pieter at the PSSL in Braunschweig in April 2000 when we were
both PhD students. It's particularly crucial to make friends at conferences
when you're a PhD student and new to everything, because it's all so
daunting. I rely heavily on surrounding myself with friends. Pieter was
one of the friends whom I relied on at conferences and also in all of life.
We became friends immediately, connecting over category theory,
Schubert, espresso, single malt whisky.

Pieter was the best friend I can imagine. He was always there for me
through the amazing ups and terrible downs of these last 22 years.
He had the sharpest perception, wriest wit, and the most exquisite
command of the English language despite it not being his first
language. He helped me understand category theory that I felt
stupid for not understanding, but he never made me feel stupid.
He gave beautiful talks, and taught me the amazing technique of
planning board talks actually board by board to ensure a good layout
of notes on the boards.

As Robin mentioned, Pieter was an accomplished poker player
and gave an extremely popular maths course on the maths of poker.
At the end of conferences we had a tradition of going to a casino
and spending the evening at a poker table. We would both put money
in, and then I'd watch as he calmly doubled or tripled it. I know nothing
about poker, but I enjoyed watching the other players trying, and failing,
to size him up.

At the Kananaskis workshop in 2006 we were halfway through a bottle
of Islay whisky when he offered me some more and said "More whisky,
Dear Colleague?" and for some reason we took to addressing each
other as Dear Colleague for ever more. It was a ridiculous moniker
for someone who was so much more than a colleague, but Pieter
was the master of understatement.

I miss my Dear Colleague terribly. I am devastated, and my life
will never be the same. My heart goes out to all those mourning
his loss.

Eugenia




On Tue, May 3, 2022 at 2:47 PM Philip Scott <scpsg@uottawa.ca> wrote:

> It is with great sadness that we announce that our dear friend and
> colleague Pieter Hofstra (1975-2022) passed away unexpectedly on May 1.
> Pieter obtained his PhD from Utrecht University, under Jaap van Oosten,
> studying realizability toposes. His research interests included general
> topos theory, realizability, inverse semigroups and groupoids, abstract
> computability, and homotopy type theory. Among his recent works, with J.
> Funk he introduced the notion of isotropy groups of toposes, which he was
> actively developing with students and colleagues.
>
> While Pieter was a brilliant researcher, a kind teacher and a caring
> supervisor, we will most remember him as a friend. When we have any
> details for a memorial service, we will pass them along.
>
> Richard Blute, Simon Henry, Philip Scott  (University of Ottawa)
>
>

[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]


             reply	other threads:[~2022-05-05 16:10 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 10+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2022-05-05 16:10 Eugenia Cheng [this message]
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2022-06-01 10:38 Oosten, J. van (Jaap)
2022-05-11 15:57 Thomas Fiore
2022-05-04 19:59 Matias M
2022-05-04 17:49 Jason Parker
2022-05-03 20:48 JS PL
2022-05-04 16:57 ` Joyal, André
2022-05-03 18:32 Philip Scott
2022-05-04 15:58 ` Jon Sterling
2022-05-04 21:11 ` Robin Cockett

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