Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-05-31/Obituaries

may have been the first Wikipedian struck down by COVID-19. The deaths of several other well-known Wikipedians were reported this month. These obituaries are taken from Deceased Wikipedians/2020 written by multiple editors and edited by Signpost staff. For the next few months The Signpost may continue to report the passing of any Wikipedian where the details have been published.

Dmitri Smirnov ()
A Soviet and British composer and an administrator of the Russian and English Wikisource projects, Dmitri passed away on April 9 from complications caused by COVID-19.

He was born in 1948 in Minsk to a family of opera singers. In 1972 he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory where his teachers included Edison Denisov, Yuri Kholopov, and Philip Gershkovich.

In 1989, his operas were staged on subjects from William Blake: Tiriel in Freiburg, Germany and Tel in London. That same year, his First Seasons Symphony was performed at the Tanglewood Festival in the US. In 1991, Smirnov emigrated to the UK where he taught at several well-known universities.

Smirnov made significant contributions to Russian and English Wikisource projects, Wikimedia Commons, Russian and English Wikipedias, and Wikidata.

He is survived by his wife, composer Elena Firsova, and by two children Philip Firsov and Alissa Firsova. -RW, -S

Kris de Vries (Kattenkruid)
The Dutch community sadly informed English Wikipedia of the passing of one of their admins: Kattenkruid. Kattenkruid ("catnip") was active on Wikipedia since 2004 and wrote articles on the topics of politics, animals and Poland. He was active in other language editions and 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 March 19, 2020.

Muid Latif ()
On April 11, 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.

Ron H. Jones ()
Ron Jones, a retired physical chemist from England, died on April 7, 2019, the day he made his last edit, in a tragic house fire that also claimed the life of his wife Sue and their beloved pets. On Wikipedia he was an administrator who helped out with WikiProject Chemistry, did anti-vandalism work, and also ran RonBot, which among other things performed maintenance on non-free images. He had been a contributor for over 11 years, making over 400,000 edits. He was a prolific editor, as well as an administrator on Wikimedia Commons since 2013 where he made over 100,000 edits. Furthermore, he was part of the Wikimedia OTRS Team. He was a member of the Inland Waterways Association, whose London branch published an obituary of him in their January–July 2019 newsletter. He published scientific papers as Ronald H. Jones. Details of some of them may be found on Scholia.

Boris Tsirelson ()
On January 21, 2020, Boris Semyonovich Tsirelson, a mathematician and professor of mathematics at Tel Aviv University, Israel, as well as a Wikipedian, passed away due to being voluntarily euthanized 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 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. His legacy will not be forgotten.