It’s sad to hear that Rajeev Motwani passed away this week.
I never had the pleasure of meeting Rajeev in person.
His work in academia is impressive and he was obviously insanely brilliant.
Back when I was starting up Tailrank, I was introduced to Rajeev and we jumped on the phone and talked about text clustering, memetracking, etc.
Smart guy and he had all the right conversations.
About six months ago I bumped into him at a party but didn’t get a chance to swing by and say hi… now I regret not taking advantage of that opportunity.
It’s always sad when someone passes away but when it’s someone who has contributed so much to the industry it’s even more of a loss.