Student mourns the loss of Comp Sci luminary

There is a temple in the south of India where priests and attendants pay a legendary debt owed to the god Krishna. According to this legend, Krishna visited the court of a king in the form of a sage and challenged him to a game of chess. Accepting the challenge, the king offered the sage anything in his kingdom should the sage win. The disguised god asked only for a portion of rice, calculated as follows: place one grain of rice on the first square of a chess board, then two on the second square. On each subsequent square place double the number of grains present in the preceding square. Though somewhat disappointed with the paltry request, the king agreed to the bet and the chess match ensued.

The king lost and was devastated to discover that a single grain of rice doubled geometrically 64 times amounts to several trillion tons of rice. Krishna revealed his true identity and informed the king that the rice could be paid back over time, dispensed for free to all who needed it. To this day, the temple carries out the god’s wishes and continues to distribute the progeny of that first grain of rice.

On the morning of Computer Science Professor Ken Kennedy’s memorial service, we computer science graduate students put away our T-shirts and jeans. We excavated our wardrobes and found the best we had in order to honor our patriarch one last time.

On the afternoon of Kennedy’s memorial service, Duncan Hall, home to the department he had founded long ago, mourned. The computer science administration doors locked at noon. Students and faculty walked its corridors in black. We descended the staircase and saw the empty third-floor conference room emblazoned with the proud title “Ken Kennedy.” We crossed the Duncan atrium in silent homage and gathered outside. We boarded buses and rode to the church.

I cannot claim to have known Kennedy well. Our interactions consisted mainly of passing nods or quick greetings in the corridors of Duncan. I was not in his family, and I was not a close friend — I merely crossed paths with him for brief moments in time. And yet, Ken was so immense a person, with so tremendous an impact on everyone and everything he touched, that those few shared moments give me reason to grieve.

That afternoon I sat at the memorial service watching the church fill. I saw faculty from philosophy, linguistics, engineering, architecture and other disciplines; I saw students and professors from across the country file into pews together. I saw provosts and maintenance staff arrive. We had all come from our different lives to celebrate Kennedy as the first grain that united all of our paths, whose distinctive intellect, passion and warmth indelibly marked each of us as one of his own.

I suppose that we all want to be a first grain of rice, predestined by something or someone to give birth to a legacy that will nourish generations. Kennedy achieved this. He touched so many people and impacted our institution so profoundly that we must pause at the passing of such a remarkable life and celebrate our duty and privilege to carry his spirit forward into the future. Farewell, Professor Kennedy. I will miss you.

Derek Ruths is a computer science graduate student.

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