Very nice post, Mads.

I too will greatly miss Michael. He always knew the answers to my questions—or knew that presently no one did. A rare mind, a good soul, and a great loss to everyone who knew him.

I looked back through my email and my first conversation with him that I could find is from 1992—on Mathematica of course—was when Michael was at Technische Universität Ilmenau and my email was paul@earwax.pd.uwa.oz.au (earwax was my University's Physics Department's PDP-11 and .oz dates back to when universities in Australia were connected only by a network system called ACSnet):

Dear Paul, thanks for your message. Your proposal is exactly what I have done. But a) I want to know a solution from a programming point of view that avoids the application of built in values and b) my hypergeometric functions arise inside a larger program after integration and so I can not (or it is rather difficult) to manipulate by hand. When I use only variables (no exact numbers like 1/2) sometimes the integrals can`t be evaluated.

Two years later, in 1994, I was invited by Allan Wylde from TELOS/Springer-Verlag to review the first draft of Michael's book: "The Mathematica Guidebook: Concepts-Examples-Applications". Allan wrote:

We now have the first part of the book, i.e., the Introduction and the first 6 chapters, ready for review. Note that this is a very "large" ( in terms of page-length) project. We are currently estimating a 1,000-page plus printed book. The manuscript is, however, very legible; it has already been edited once, and it has been a.) translated from the original German into English, b.) converted from Notebooks to tex, c.) poured into the macros/design we've created for the book. (Which, by the way, will be "tweaked" a bit more; we are currently seeing too much white space, there's too much code displayed in the book-- we'll relegate some to the accompanying CD-ROM, and the graphics/illustrations need to be enlarged, somewhat).

Aside: The TELOS project—The Electronic Library of Science—originated in Springer-Verlag's Santa Clara office (by Allan) and was considered "...an ideal combination between the generation of information and the processing of information using old and new media."

I did make some negative comments on the drafts of the print version:

Other pages consisted of interminably long, uncommented Mathematica input or output. No reader (even the most Teutonic) will read all of this! Note that this book can only be profitably read whilst in front of a computer. The reader will then be able to try the input for themselves. No-one should ever have to type in long input (and that is what the CD is for) and long output, especially repetitive output, should be deleted or ellipsis used.

Of course, Michael's Guidebooks ended up being a classic—and the Notebooks and code on the CD-ROM was, and still is, invaluable.

The last time I met Michael in person was when I invited him and Amy Young to give a talk on The State of the Unit at the 2022 Wolfram Summer School held at the Wolfram Research office in Champaign, Illinois. But there were many, many emails exchanged since then.

Finally, I wonder who, if anyone, I can ask deep questions and get detailed, comprehensive answers. And, sadly, I think the answer is there is no other "Michael" out there...

So sad to hear of Michael's passing. He is one of the people I felt really lucky to have overlapped with, such a lovely and creative person as many have attested.

I am deeply saddened by the loss of Michael Trott, a brilliant mind and cherished friend.

I had the privilege of sharing an office with Michael in the late 1990s at Wolfram Research, and we stayed in touch over the years. His boundless enthusiasm for Mathematica and computational discovery was infectious, always paired with a generous willingness to share his knowledge. Whether diving into complex problems or sparking insightful discussions,

Michael’s passion left a lasting impact. I will miss him dearly. May his memory inspire us all, and may he rest in peace.

I'm genuinely shocked and saddened by this news. Michael's Mathematica GuideBooks were my silent companions through the labyrinth of PhD research, those ~5000 pages taught me that Mathematica wasn't just a tool but a way of thinking about mathematics itself. His blog posts were small masterpieces of insight, and I still remember the joy of discovering his elegant approach to programming the Mathematica logo for each version. Though I never had the privilege of meeting him personally, his work profoundly shaped how I approach computational problems every day.

Thank you, Michael, for being a guide to so many of us on this computational journey.
Rest in peace.

Dear members of the Wolfram Community and friends,

I am deeply saddened by the untimely passing of Michael. I met him in 2000 at Wolfram Research where I was a visiting scholar, and later at several conferences on symbolic computation. I also had the privilege to review his four Mathematica Guidebooks for SIAM review:

https://people.mines.edu/whereman/wp-content/uploads/sites/260/2024/05/Hereman-SIAM-Review-47-4-2006.pdf

https://people.mines.edu/whereman/wp-content/uploads/sites/260/2024/05/Hereman-SIAM-Review-49-1-2007.pdf

Writing these books was a Herculean job to the benefit of all of us.

He has always been very supportive of the efforts of my students and myself in designing software to analyze the integrability and exact solutions of nonlinear PDEs. I am grateful for his advice, friendship, support, and mentorship. My heartfelt condolences and deepest sympathy to Michael's family and friends. He will be dearly missed.

Willy Hereman, Professor Emeritus, Dept. Applied Maths & Stats, Colorado School of Mines

I learned of Michael's death, and I am shocked and horrified. Michael and I worked together from 1988 to 1994 at the Technische Hochschule Ilmenau (later the Technical University of Ilmenau). Michael finished his doctoral thesis a year earlier than I did. He had created many appendices in his thesis, which allowed the main body of the work to be read fluently while providing further information in the appendices as needed. I found the idea brilliant. We talked a lot about politics in the years 1989/1990. The discussions with Michael were always interesting and offered a bird's-eye perspective. However, Michael not only had an excellent overview of politics, but also of mathematics. Through him, I was introduced to many new mathematical approaches. Michael was a very hardworking man who lived for science. I have his first book on Mathematica (written on a NeXT computer) as a loose-leaf collection in my cabinet, and I still look into it from time to time. I came to know Michael as a person who was always friendly and never moody. I would have loved to continue working with him, but his path led him to the USA; I remained in Germany. Michael, I hope that we will meet again in a later life. I would certainly be very happy about that.

After meeting Theo and Stephen back ‘in the beginning’ Michael was one of the first people I met at Wolfram who left a very serious impression on me - as a scientist and as a personality. He grilled me on the elegance of functional programming, we joked about write-only languages.

I only just learned about his passing from Paul, yesterday.

I’m surprised and truly heartbroken. I have nothing to add that hasn’t already been wonderfully said.