Thanks to Claire for guest blogging during my vacation. I apologize
for the various technical difficulties on the weblog last week and all
should be better now.
Unfortunately I come back to news of a loss of a young member of the
complexity community. Mikhail
Alekhnovich died in a white-water rafting accident in Russia on
August 5. Misha, who just finished his first year as an
assistant professor at UCSD Math, had some very deep results
in theory, most notably in propositional proof complexity.
Misha did his postdoctoral work at the Institute for Advanced
Study and the IAS theory
page has more on this tragedy.
a white-water kayaking accident, to be precise. (Apparently he was a very experienced white-water paddler...) If you read Russian: http://www.x-lifestyle.com/?page=51&lang=1&id=1740
"Not to mention the rest, Misha was one of most well-known specialists in computer science from Russia, and not only in his generation, but in general also.