![\"Image](\"https:\/\/toc.csail.mit.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/profile_pic\/public\/avatars\/picture-197-1416854969.jpg?itok=OvipNyoG\")
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I first encountered Michael Cohen when, as a freshman newly arrived at MIT, he walked into my office unannounced to ask if I had any open problems for him to solve. My first reaction was bemused annoyance: who does this punk think he is? he’s ready to do theory, but doesn’t<\/em> even know enough to make an appointment first? also, why doesn’t he shave?<\/em><\/p>\n And then, five minutes later, I was practically begging<\/em> him to do research with me. “OK, so you didn’t like that problem? Wait, I’ve got another one! Hey, where are you going…”<\/p>\n Within those five minutes, it had become obvious that this was a freshman who I could—must—talk to like an advanced grad student or professor. Sadly for quantum computing, Michael ultimately decided to go into classical parts of theoretical computer science, such as low-rank approximation and fast algorithms for geometry and linear-algebra problems. But that didn’t stop him from later taking my graduate course on quantum complexity theory, where he sat in the front and loudly interrupted me every minute, stream-of-consciousness style, so that my “lectures” often turned into dialogues with him. Totally unforgivable—all the more so because his musings were always<\/em> on point, constantly catching me in errors or unjustified claims (one of which I blogged about previously<\/a>).<\/p>\n Not once did I ever suspect he did it to show off: he was simply so overtaken by his urge to understand the point at hand, as to be oblivious to all niceties. Yet somehow, that social obliviousness didn’t stop him from accumulating a huge circle of friends. (Well, it was<\/em> MIT.)<\/p>\n Michael stayed on at MIT as a grad student, racking up an incredible publication list<\/a> by age 25. This semester, he went to visit the Simons Institute for Theory of Computing in Berkeley.<\/p>\n Three days ago, Michael was found dead in his apartment in Berkeley, after having cancelled a scheduled talk because he was feeling unwell. No cause has been given.<\/p>\n The horrible news came just as I was arriving in Germany for the Heidelberg Laureate Forum<\/a>, to speak about quantum supremacy. So I barely had time to process the tragedy—yet it was always in the background, especially as I learned that in his brief life, Michael had also touched many of the other computer scientists who I spoke with in Heidelberg, such as Dan Spielman, whose approach to Ramanujan graphs (with Marcus and Srivastava) Michael had made constructive<\/a> in one of his most celebrated works. Only now is the full weight of what happened bearing down on me.<\/p>\n I understand that memorial events are being planned at both MIT and Berkeley. Feel free to share memories of Michael in the comments; see also Luca’s post<\/a> and Lance’s post<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is an unfathomable loss for Michael’s family, for his many friends and colleagues, and for a field that’s been robbed of decades of breakthroughs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I first encountered Michael Cohen when, as a freshman newly arrived at MIT, he walked into my office unannounced to ask if I had any open problems for him to solve. My first reaction was bemused annoyance: who does this punk think he is? he’s ready to do theory, but doesn’t even know enough to make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3468"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4085,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3468\/revisions\/4085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}