From Chikara SASAKI, Graduate Student of the Program of History and Philosophy of Science and the Department of History, 1976-1980; Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Professor of History of Mathematics at the Graduate School of Mathematical Sciences of the University of Tokyo, Japan, & Visiting Professor of Northeastern University in Shenyang, People’s Republic of China; Obtained Ph. D. degree for the thesis on “Descartes’s Mathematical Thought” under the Guidance of Prof. Michael S. Mahoney.

I express my deep sentiment of sadness of the sudden death of Prof. Michael S. Mahoney, my teacher of history of mathematics at Princeton. I remember old good days studying very hard with Profs. Charles C. Gillispie, Thomas S. Kuhn, Michael S. Mahoney during the late 1970s. Please convey this message to all the participants of the mourning ceremony at the Princeton University Chapel on October 18, especially to Jean, Mrs. Mahoney.

Historians of mathematics in Japan remember Prof. Mahoney first of all through my Japanese translation of a collection of his excellent essays entitled “Mathematics in History” of which the first edition was published in 1982 and the enlarged second edition in 2007, and secondly through his recent brilliant papers on the history of computation. Some of them listened to his insightful lectures on the history of computer science and were impressed by his warm personality when he and Jean visited Japan in the fall of 1999. I, all of my students, and readers of his book not simply in Japan but also in China will succeed the great intellectual legacy of the late Prof. Michael S. Mahoney and remember him forever and ever.