Mihai Pătraşcu 1982–2012 | Hacker News Reader

Mihai Pătraşcu 1982–2012

rjlipton.wordpress.com

599 pointsmathgenius29 comments

When I was at high school, he was my hero and role model. He won IOI gold medal twice and was studying at MIT back then. What he had achieved was my dream and I wanted to follow his steps. So one day, I decided to write him an email, asking for his mentorship. To my surprise, he wrote a lengthy response.

For next couple of years, we exchanged few emails. His advices and tips ranging from college applications to solutions to technical problems were invaluable. He is the man who inspired me to achieve my goals. It's unfortunate that I didn't have a chance to meet him in person.

My condolences to his family and friends.

If possible, could you post some of these tips? They would be really interesting to read and definitely helpful.

Here is his first email: https://gist.github.com/25be1b58f169bf2a7d90

Any others?

Here is one more about data structures: https://gist.github.com/73b62f3f34cb59a2913b

Rest, I think they are bit personal.

When one of my instructors at Berkeley had to take leave due to personal issues, Mihai stepped in as the instructor. The course became one of the most challenging, instructive, and yet enjoyable one during my time at Berkeley. What I will remember about him is the aura of genius that was unmistakable, and the surprising level of warmth and camaraderie he displayed every time he interacted with us. Being as brilliant as he was, I always marveled at his patience when explaining things to his students. This makes me truly sad to a level I have not experience many times in my life.

Mihai's enthusiasm for the material was infectious, and I quite enjoyed starting the day off with that class. I'm glad Mihai shared a few of his tricks.

I'm really sad to hear that the world lost him. He will be missed :(

Right there with ya. He made computer science seem bad-ass, and I've never been more humbled in my EECS career than by his CS172 midterms.

I never met Mihai in my life and will never achieve anything close to what he has but I do remember trying to read his PhD thesis to while away my time and I chanced upon the section where he said that he solved a problem he was working on after pulling an all-nighter while he was sick and lying on a couch to recover. The guy was brilliant and truly enjoyed his work. Few people are so capable of consistent excellence as Mihai was.

"In the spring of 2008, I was trying to submit 4 papers to FOCS, during my job interview season. Needless to say, this was a challenging experience. I had an interview at Google scheduled two days before the deadline, and I made an entirely unrealistic plan to go to New York with the 5am train, after working through the night. By 5am, I had a serious headache and the beginning of a cold, and I had to postpone the interview at the last minute. However, this proved to be a very auspicious incident. As I was lying on an MIT couch the next day trying to recover, I had an entirely unexpected revelation: the 4-dimensional lower bound could be proved by a series of reductions from lopsided set disjointness! This got developed into the set of reductions in [82], and submitted to the conference. I owe my sincere apologies to the Google researchers for messing their schedules with my unrealistic planning. But in the end, I’m glad things hapenned this way, and the incident was clearly good for science."

Lower Bound Techniques for Data Structures - http://people.csail.mit.edu/mip/docs/thesis-phd/phd.pdf

I had never met Mihai but I knew of his work and had read his blog many times. This is a sad loss. The same day, June 5, I also lost a dear and incredibly brilliant friend long before his time. Much too much talent to be lost in one day. My condolences to those who knew him directly.

Pleging HN upvote no-matter any of today's news as sign of respect for him and for his work.

He sounds like a terrific teacher. Are there any video records of him presenting technical information?

I'm 29. Almost 30. I never heard of this guy (but now I'll be reading what I can about him), but that "1982-2012" is kind of creepy. Rest in peace, Mihai. I look forward to you inspiring me like you have many other commenters here.

I used to bump into Mihai on a semi-regular basis while at MIT. I have great respect for his work and him as a person. My deepest condolences to his family and friends, this is a huge loss.

Beyond saddened. In addition to his technical brilliance he had keen insights into CS as a field of study, and his blog posts about that had a great effect on career decisions I made.

This has to be asked: can someone reply with a breakdown of all of Miahi Pătraşcu's work, at least the important bits, with a single sentence description of why it's important? Let's remember Mihai for the good he did for us, I think that's the best way to commemorate him.

So sad :(. Rest in peace man.

treatment = profit while cure stops all income

It's kind of sick that he passed away with 29 years. I also wonder why he haven't told it anybody. My deepest condolences.

Because he didn't want to be stuck in the social prison of pity that people create around you. And the attitude of guessing your competence while your sick. I don't know what would of happened to his insurance if he somehow lost his position? That is my guess at least.

shellox and mahyarm, please take note:

why he haven't told it anybody => why he hasn't told it to anybody

what would of happened => what would have happened

your sick => you're sick

I'd hate to be a "spelling nazi", but I believe getting this right is the very least we should expect from the HN crowd.

keep in mind that not all HN posters are native English speakers.

  > keep in mind that not all HN posters are native
  > English speakers.

In that case, feedback is even more valuable.

The feedback is but his superior tone is unwarranted.

I don't feel it had a superior tone, but I think the original thread warranted a rather cold yet concise feedback.

I believe you've confused spelling and grammar. In the future, when you're being condescending towards non-native English speakers - be sure to note the differences between spelling and grammar.

Did I step on a nerve? Again, please don't mistake my cold feedback for condescending comments.

I am fully aware of the differences between spelling and grammar. You may not be aware of this, but "spelling nazi" is simply a popular expression, hence the double quotes that I explicitly added.

Don't worry - next time I'll say "grammar nazi".

I wrote this while sleepy, you shouldn't expect much from the written equivalent of talking at a party with a bunch of geeks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_change

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