Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians/2007

Báder Imre (Bader; Baderimre)
Dr. Báder Imre died in November 2007. He was a retired associate professor of the University of Miskolc where he worked for nearly 40 years. He registered on Wikipedia on his 62nd birthday, March 1, 2007, and contributed several articles and images on physics and chemistry, including a featured article about surface tension. He was buried in the St. Anna cemetery in Miskolc on December 3, 2007. The community was informed of his death by his colleague Szalax. Several Wikipedians expressed their condolences here.

Robert Braunwart (Rbraunwa)


Robert Braunwart (Rbraunwa) was born in Richland, Washington in 1948 and grew up in Moses Lake. He lived for many years in Oaxaca, México and Los Angeles, California. He attended Reed College as a National Merit Scholar before transferring to the University of Washington. During his life, Robert worked as an administrative assistant, editor, small business owner, and online math tutor, but his major interests and activities centered on political activities and a variety of personal projects, ranging from co-founding the Professional Football Researchers Association to contributing 11,910 edits and hundreds of articles to English Wikipedia, primarily on the viceroys of New Spain and 1,128 edits to ten other Wikimedia projects. Of these new articles, at least 15 were honored as Did you know selections. Robert died on October 14, 2007, from melanoma.

Uładzimir Katkoŭski (Rydel)
Uładzimir Katkoŭski, a well-known and award-winning Belarusian blogger, editor of several Belarusian websites and activist for the usage of the Belarusian language on the Internet. He made 1,343 contributions to the English Wikipedia and 1,286 contributions to nine other Wikimedia projects. Katkouski mostly edited articles about his country and his language. He was hit by a fire truck in 2006 and, after being in a coma for about a year, he died on May 25, 2007.

Scott Laws (Dalf)


Scott Laws, username Dalf, died of colon cancer on September 14, 2007. He had been a long-term Wikipedian, making 3,332 contributions to English Wikipedia since April 8, 2005, and 23 contributions to five other Wikimedia projects. Among the articles he edited were Imperial Japanese Navy, Horcrux, and Nuclear power. Laws was an alumnus of Hickman High School and the University of Missouri and worked for Microsoft's Hotmail in Silicon Valley until he was diagnosed with cancer in 2004. He was 30 years old.

Maciej Ostrowski (MOstrows)
Maciej Ostrowski died on September 24, 2007. Since January 23, 2006, he was an active contributor to the Polish Wikipedia. Due to his interests in theoretical organic chemistry, he wrote a few articles related to this subject. According to his own userpage, he was interested in tumours, and enjoyed travelling – especially by train. He used to translate articles from the English Wikipedia and liked the Czech language as well.

Although he was very sick and weakened for a few years before his death, he described his illness on his blog (Polish).

Tron Øgrim (Tronogrim)


Tron Øgrim, a Norwegian Wikimedian, journalist, and author, died on May 23, 2007. He was 59 years old. Tron was one of the most influential people in Norway's Marxist-Leninist movement in the sixties and seventies. He was one of the founders of the Workers' Communist Party, a party which strongly advocated the Chinese branch of communism. Tron was also central in the founding of the newspaper Klassekampen and the publishing house Oktober. Tron became a journalist after leaving politics in the eighties, having a technology column in the Norwegian edition of PC World. Tron became a Wikipedian in December 2005, when libelous statements about a colleague appeared in a Norwegian (bokmål) Wikipedia article. Tron continued as a Wikipedia editor after the issue was resolved, writing about constructed languages through most of 2006. In the fall of 2006, his focus changed to Nepal generally and the history of communism in Nepal specifically (see Nepals kommunistiske parti (maoistisk) for an example of one of his articles.) Tron was known in the Norwegian wikicommunity for writing very long articles about somewhat obscure topics. Tron also cared much about smaller wikis and their progress. He was routinely posting messages about milestones at the Norwegian Village Pump, as well as participating on the Wikimedia News announcements page. Tron was extremely important for the Norwegian wiki movement, and he was often interviewed by the press about Wikipedia. He gave a lecture about Wikipedia when Wikipedia's founder Jimbo Wales visited Norway in May 2006. More info on him is available at Tron Øgrim and Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-05-28/Wikipedian_death.

Emil Petkov (Espetkov)
Emil Petkov was a Bulgarian editor who died on 27 May 2007. For more info see his Bulgarian Wikipedia profile.

David Shear (David Shear)
David Shear (David Shear) received a B.A. from Swarthmore College in 1959 with majors in math and biology and a Ph.D. in biophysics from Brandeis University in 1966. He worked in the biochemistry department at the University of Missouri, and at the Institute for Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin (where his son and wife are also faculty members.) In 1972 he published a science fiction novel, Cloning. He joined Wikipedia in September 2005 and focused on articles related to mathematics and thermodynamics. David died on April 21, 2007.

Carli Ann Ward (CanadaGirl)
Carli Ann Ward, born 18 March 1982 in Saint John, New Brunswick, began editing in July 2005, starting with wikignome work and moving into vandal fighting. In November 2006, she noted "I was diagnosed with cervical cancer in August of 2006. It is expected to be terminal, and the doctors have told me I probably won't live past the summer of 2007," and noting that she would continue to update her website. She died on 15 December 2007 from clear cell adenocarcinoma. A tribute website has been created detailing her life.