Goodbye Old Friend. R.I.P. Rajeev Motwani

gigaom.com

63 points·peter123··6 comments

Holy shit. The article is not even entirely correct - he was teaching classes as recently as 3:15 this afternoon, when I took his CS154 final. I saw him yesterday, in a meeting. I didn't know him well at all, but he was a very good professor...he was going to be on sabbatical next year. This is a complete shock...I don't know what happened, but it must have been sudden, because he seemed perfectly healthy yesterday afternoon.

My deepest condolences go to his friends and family.

my condolences go to you too endtime. I can't imagine how shocked you might be when someone you have seen just yesterday is no longer with us.

Thank you...it is very strange and upsetting.

this must be a real shocker to a lot of people since he was still at work today. I wonder why there isn't any explanation at all about this. My guess is that it's a courtesy to family and friends to be informed first.

Sorry if what I said above was misleading - I didn't see him at the exam, it was just proctored by TAs, but that is not unusual. Also, he couldn't have been in today - got this e-mail a couple hours ago:

>Dear CS students,

>I'm deeply saddened and shocked to inform you that our CS faculty colleague Rajeev Motwani passed away last night in an accident at his home. Our sympathy goes out to Rajeev's friends and family, and to the large number of colleagues and students whose education and lives have been enriched by his.

The DbWorld email has slightly more info: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/dbworld/messages/2009-06/1244262718.h...

"Rajeev Motwani passed away last night in a swimming pool accident at his home."

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