Subject: for the list From: Jack Morava Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 17:46:27 -0400 (EDT) To: DON DAVIS Dear Don, Could you please post this, on the list? Thanks, sadly, Jack ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ On 21 September 2004 our friend and colleague Michimasa Tanabe of Kyoto University passed away. We mourn the passing of one of the brightest and sweetest people we have had the privilege of knowing. Tanabe was interested in the deeper aspects of the topology and representation theory of finite groups. One of his striking early results [AJM 117 (1995)] was the calculation of the higher K-theories of a large class of Chevalley groups. Later he was very successful in generalizing ideas developed in the study of the largest finite simple group (Moonshine) to the elliptic cohomology of general finite groups [Contemp. Math 293 (2000)]. His very deep and beautiful papers in J. Math. Kyoto Univ. [42 (2002)] show us how to understand the elliptic cohomology of a finite group as sections of powers of a natural line bundle over the moduli stack Bun_G(E) of principal G-bundles over an elliptic curve. [This simple paraphrase conceals many delicate arithmetical issues which Tanabe elegantly resolved.] Tanabe was very gentle and very kind; and he could be very cheerful. We are all shocked, and very sad, in the face of this loss.