3/7/2016 Ah, It Was Just a Hackby Bruce Papazian, BBN Colleague
The last time I saw Ray was a few years ago at a BBN event. It had been a few more years since I last saw him before that meeting. I congratulated him on the recognition he was receiving for his email work. His response was, "Ah, it was just a hack." 3/7/2016 One of the Nicest Peopleby Benjamin Woznick, BBN Colleague
I remember Ray as one of the nicest people that I encountered in any of my jobs.. 3/7/2016 A Friend, a Mentor and a Colleagueby Bob Thomas, BBN Colleague
I am deeply saddened to have learned of Ray's death. For me, Ray was a friend, a mentor and a colleague. I'm thankful to have known and worked with Ray. May he rest in peace. 3/7/2016 _I_ like my coffee _black_.by Michael Harris, BBN Colleague Ray was a splendid scientist and an inspiring human being. My favorite memory: At one point, he was exercising a text-to-speech gizmo in his office at 10 Moulton, and was getting it to do inflections. He had it saying "I like my coffee black" in an endless loop, with varying emphasis, e.g.,
My office was a couple of doors away from Ray's, and we had a very cordial relationship. But after what seemed like a few hours of this, I went down and begged him to either stop the program or just give the <redacted> thing some <redacted> black coffee. He was thoroughly engrossed, and it hadn't bothered him at all.
I still think fondly of Ray whenever I hear someone order coffee (although I quit drinking the stuff that day ...). by Tom Mitchell, BBN Colleague, Raytheon BBN When my daughter Kate was in 5th grade, in 2006, she had to do a report on a famous scientist. Kids would typically choose someone like Alexander Graham Bell or George Washington Carver. But Kate had heard me talk about Ray Tomlinson, the inventor of email. She decided to do her report on Ray, the only one in the class to choose a living scientist. She emailed Ray to arrange an interview. That’s akin to calling Alexander Graham Bell on the telephone. She came to the office and sat with Ray for 20 or 30 minutes and asked him a set of questions that she had prepared. Ray was his usual patient, jovial self and seemed to get a kick out of the whole interview process. The project culminated with a presentation day when the students would dress up as their scientist and the parents and other classrooms could visit the class and learn about all the different scientists. She let Ray know about the event and thanked him for the interview. When the date rolled around, Kate dressed up as Ray and stood at her desk to answer questions about her scientist. Lo and behold, her scientist showed up! He stood by her side, for a while and seemed to genuinely enjoy being the only actual scientist in the room. Kate, needless to say, was thrilled. Ray was the talk of the classroom. 3/6/2016 Love of Great and Elegant Solutionsby Robert Fleischman, BBN Colleague
Ray was incredibly influential to me and so many others. Ray's technical brilliance, curiosity, humbleness and love of great and elegant solutions was inspiring. Ray was great, but, made you feel like you could be great too. Obviously, many of us owe him for a great start to our careers. So sad today, by Ray Nickerson, BBN Colleague
What a loss! I remember Ray as a brilliant, modest, quiet, friendly guy, with no hint of the sense of self importance that too often goes with outstanding talent. When I have occasion to note having worked at BBN and want to impress someone with how interesting that was, I often mention that that is where Ray Tomlinson worked. He did us all proud. [Editor's Note: Ray Nickerson was a senior BBN Manager -- Division Director of the 6 Divisions at BBN in which Ray worked. Ray is also a pretty modest guy...] by Jerry Wolf, BBN Colleague
We have suffered a great loss today. When, as a grad student, I joined the Speech Communications Group at MIT in 1966, I met Ray, also grad student in the same group. He subsequently finished a project, married the professor's secretary, and left, not necessarily in that order. I stayed on a few more years, and when I ended up at BBN several years later, I found him in my Division (and "Divisions" were small in those days). We never worked together, as he was enhancing TENEX, inventing networked email, and doing a huge variety of things in interactive computing, while I worked on signal processing endeavors. But we were there together in the early days, and we were friends. 3/6/2016 Kindest, Smartestby Sheila Mello, BBN Colleague
Ray was one of the kindest, smartest people I ever worked with. He never complained doing whatever it took to solve a problem. A real loss. My heart goes out to his family and those who were close with him. |
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