The other day, in the “linguistic annotation” class I teach, the question came up why, in XML, values of the attribute type “ID” must match the “Name” production. I’ve also always found this a bit counter-intuitive for beginners to understand and promised to ask Michael what the rationale behind that decision was so that the students can get the insight straight from the original source. Later that evening, when I wanted to send him an email, I was shocked to learn of Michael’s recent passing.

We lost a giant. Michael was one of the nicest and smartest human beings I ever had the pleasure of talking to and also collaborating with. He was truly one of a kind, from providing fascinating angles to hard problems to unconventional approaches for preparing a one hour lecture – simply sketching it out the night before on a napkin over dinner. I’m both happy and grateful that our paths crossed quite a few times throughout the years, I just wish life would’ve had foreseen many more of these sometimes planned, sometimes random encounters.