Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians/2020

Boris Tsirelson ()
On 21 January 2020, Boris Semyonovich Tsirelson, a Wikipedian, mathematician and professor at Tel Aviv University, Israel, passed away from euthanasia following a terminal battle with cancer. (Mourning page at Tel Aviv University, 25 January 2020) (Talkpage declaration of his voluntary assisted death) He was 69. During his lifetime, he made notable contributions to the fields of probability theory and functional analysis, such as Tsirelson's bound and Tsirelson space. On Wikipedia, he made 8,857 edits, including the creation of pages such as Conditioning (probability) and Standard probability space, among others. It is currently unknown if he is survived by anyone, but his legacy will not be forgotten.

Marek Lugowski ()
Marek Wojciech Lugowski, who actively edited the English and Polish Wikipedia from 2008 to 2018, died on January 21, 2020 of colon cancer. He was an artificial intelligence researcher and a poet. An obituary can be seen here.

Muid Latif ()
On 11 April 2020, Muid Latif, a former project lead of Creative Commons in Malaysia who had been promoting the free-culture movement and open collaboration, passed away as announced by his brother at Latif's official Facebook page.

Dmitri Smirnov ()
Dmitri Smirnov, a Russian Wikimedian, composer, and teacher who migrated to the UK, passed away on 9 April from complications caused by COVID-19. See obituary on Russian Wikinews. His previous account was.

Kris de Vries (Kattenkruid)
The Dutch community sadly informs of the passing of one of their admins: Kris de Vries. Kattenkruid (catnip) was active on Wikipedia since 2004 and wrote articles on the topics of politics, animals and Poland. He was active on Wikidata as well, mainly with manual edits. He became an administrator on the Dutch Wikipedia in 2009 and was active until his passing on 19 March 2020.

Stephen Lecheler ()
Over his 12 years on Wikipedia, Stephen Lecheler made over 30,000 contributions to the English Wikipedia and was renowned as a friendly and intelligent face to many in the community, running both DRN clerk bot and HasteurBot. He passed away in June 2020.

Marcus Sherman ()
Marcus Sherman (August 5, 1947 – April 25, 2020) from Cape Cod joined Wikipedia on 14 January 2007 and was keenly interested in improving content related to protected areas in southern India on the English Wikipedia.

Brian McNeil ()
Brian died suddenly on 4 July. His many friends in the Wikimedia movement loved his irascible humour (on his Facebook profile he described himself as a "curmudgeonly bastard who will swear at you for being repeatedly stupid"), his staunch advocacy of Wikinews and Scottish independence, and his taste in hats.

Brian made just under a thousand Wikipedia edits between 2004 and 2018, but over 47,000 to Wikinews, where he was a bureaucrat, and also contributed to both Commons (3,825 edits) and Meta (>300).

Jerome West ()
Jerome West died on 19 July 2020. He was a South African contributor and administrator on the English Wikipedia, having made 9,265 edits. Jerome's death was announced by his widow on Facebook.

Pauline van Till ()


On 27 July 2020, the Dutch Wikipedia lost a long-time member of the editing community. Pauline Louise van Till ("Dutchess") was better known under her username PVT Pauline. She mainly wrote articles about World War II, golf and the international world of golfers in the English and Dutch Wikipedia, but also contributed images from all over the world to Commons.

She was also known under her other accounts (after the big usurp): User:Pvt pauline~commonswiki and Pvt_pauline~enwiki. One of her most iconic pictures used throughout Wikimedia, is of Johan Cruijff as a golfer in 2009: File:Johan Cruijff golfer cropped.jpg.

Alin Huțu ()
Alin Huțu was an admin at Romanian Wikipedia who chose euthanasia after battling with brain cancer.

Jerome Kohl ()
Jerome Kohl died August 4, at the age of 73. A world-renowned music theorist, he was one of the most prolific editors in WikiProject Classical Music, specializing in music of the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as music of the Middle Ages. A stickler for facts, accuracy, and reliable sources, he maintained hundreds of articles, and was well-known to most editors in these topic areas. Jerry was collegial, funny, occasionally acerbic, and always responsive. He had a Ph.D. in music theory from the University of Washington (1981) on the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, and become one of the world experts on his music; additionally he was a managing editor of the distinguished periodical Perspectives of New Music. On Wikipedia, if it was twelve-tone, serial, avant-garde, outré, experimental, and loosely descended from the European classical tradition, it probably has Jerry’s fingerprints on it. Visitors to Wikipedia will be appreciating his work as long as the place endures. Ave atque vale; those of us who have worked with you will miss your precision, scope, and wit.

Paul T. McCain ()
Rev. Paul T. McCain was a Lutheran pastor and publisher who contributed numerous images and amassed 1,600 edits to a variety of Lutheranism-related pages on Wikipedia in 2006. His passionately held views on these topics drew him into conflict with other editors, and after some time he was indefinitely blocked from editing. However, the bookofconcord.com website, which he personally operated and funded, continues to be used as a reference on Lutheranism-related Wikipedia articles.

Rev. McCain's colleague, Rev. Harrison, wrote that "Paul served as a pastor in Iowa, senior assistant to LCMS President A.L. Barry, and was serving as the Publisher at our Concordia Publishing House."

Aditya Kabir ()
Aditya Kabir passed away on 9 December 2020, at the age of 50. He had 25,399 edits in Wikipedia. He was particularly active in articles related to Bangladesh and South Asia, and was involved in helping the article Bengali language movement achieve featured article status. He was instrumental in getting articles like Bikini, Sitakunda Upazila, Biman Bangladesh Airlines and Jayne Mansfield to good article status, among others. After several years of low activity, he became fairly active in 2020. He was very helpful, and acted as mentor to many new users.

Bill Skaggs ()
Bill was a distinguished neuroscientist, who made important contributions to the physiology of the hippocampus. He was the founding member of WP:WikiProject Neuroscience, and often helped inexperienced users at the WP:Reference desk. He is remembered appreciatively here.