NYTimes Obituary for Ilya Zhitomirskiy, Co-Founder of Social Network, Dies at 22

“He was an immensely talented and intent young mathematician,” Mr. Moglen said in an interview on Tuesday. “He had a choice between graduate school and this project, and he chose to do the project because he wanted to do something with his time that would make freedom.”

22 is young to die. It's sad and I feel for his family and friends. But to have such a quote from Eben Moglen in an obituary in the New York Times, for his work to be compared to one of the greatest juggernauts (Facebook) of our day, to be respected for the quality of his academic and professional work and the choices he made to promote freedom...

22 is also young to have made such a meaningful mark on the world and to be respected for his work and choices. I feel I can at least learn something from his examples and hope to live up to the choices he made.

the obituary mentions he attended tulane university, the university of maryland and nyu.

was he moving around as an undergrad or was he doing a graduate degree?

I briefly talked to Ilya in March after he randomly gave me 9001 invites to Diaspora (some here might get the joke). It's like I won some weird sort of lottery. Anyways, it naturally encouraged me to invite lots of people, and I got about forty to sign up. He struck me as a very warm, fun-loving guy who was also fastidious in his work. I saw him announcing bug fixes and new features day in and day out. He really left a strong impression on me.

I'd really like to learn more about the circumstances of his death, and not out of morbid curiosity. I suffer from bipolar 1 disorder, and have been taken medication for two years since I was diagnosed after having a severe manic episode. His death was a bit of a wakeup call.