Tardis

Barbora Knobloch

Sverre Aarseth

Andy Archer

I have several very happy memories of visiting Berkeley to work with Edgar. On one visit, I spent a weekend with Edgar and Barbora exploring the Groveland area followed by a day with them to Yosemite, where I took this photo of them.

Daniele Avitabile & Mathieu Desroches

Cédric Beaume

Edgar was part of the jury for my PhD defense in 2012 and, owing to his knowledge on the topic and his taste for rigor and quality, he was a feared reviewer. A few minutes into my presentation, the unexpected happened: Edgar fell asleep! Perhaps was I not interesting enough? The question was upstaged by the relief of knowing that he was to miss all the imperfections in my presentation. Then came the questions and the unexpected happened once again: Edgar woke up and asked me the most arduous question! So, now you know why I got Edgar a capuccino before the conference started—see photo—it is so that he does not fall asleep and then ask arduous questions!

Tim Callahan

Bérengère Dubrulle

Alan Champneys

Gerhard Dangelmayr

I have known Edgar since the early 1980s, when he visited our Information Sciences institute in Tübingen for the first time. Besides his research in nonlinear science, Edgar has other interests and talents which he usually practices with his typical perfection. I want to address here his extreme good shape in mountain hiking and climbing. During his early visits in Tübingen, he used to run the hill right behind our institute up and down to maintain his shape, before starting the work day.
I owe my first experience in hiking in Colorado to Edgar when he visited me in Fort Collins in 1994. He was very keen to go for a hike, so we chose Grey Rock, a popular mountain near Fort Collins. The final trail to the summit is difficult and hardly identifiable. I am sure without Edgar's lead I would not have reached the top. On the summit we enjoyed the spectacular view and ate the sandwiches we brought, but still were hungry afterwards. Edgar then searched his pocket and found a package of peanuts from the flight—in those days the airlines were more generous than nowadays. These peanuts saved the day and we could return satisfied and strengthened to Fort Collins. For me this hike was a great experience and incentive. I memorized the trail to the summit and thereafter took visitors, who wanted to go for a challenging hike, to Grey Rock. Unfortunately, the view from the summit is now rather depressing as most of the area around it is covered with burned trees from the recent wildfires.

Punit Gandhi

Isabel Mercader

Lendert Gelens

Leonardo Gordillo

Everybody knows that Edgar loves cats. As an example, the first time Edgar came to our home at Santiago, we introduced him to our cats. Of course, he got along with them in matter of minutes. The next morning, I found Edgar in our living room, sitting quietly next to our cat Kelu. She was purring while Edgar was asking her: "Would you like to take my place and teach Physics at Berkeley? I can stay here...".

Henar Herrero

Keith Julien

Rich Kerswell

It must have been about 10 years ago I noticed that every conference/workshop/summer school I attended in any part of the world, Edgar would be there. He always seemed to be travelling and it got to the point where I didn't actually believe he spent any time at his home institution UC Berkeley. When the yearly APS DFD meeting was held in San Francisco (2014), I took the opportunity to visit the UC Berkeley campus afterwards as I'd spent the academic year 1987–1988 there doing a Master's degree (when, of course, Edgar was away all year on sabbatical). While there, I decided to see if Edgar's office actually existed. To my surprise—see photo—it did and Edgar was in it! Amazing...

Paco Marques

Jeff Moehlis

I took Physics 205B with Edgar in Spring 1995. The homework assignments for this class involved a lot of algebra! For one assignment, I couldn't get a staple to go through my stack of calculations, so I had to split it into two parts. But to say that I learned a lot in that class would be an understatement. I still refer back to the notes from this class 20+ years later.

For my first research project with Edgar, I finally got something nontrivial by going to fourth order in the expansion. (It seems that Edgar is never intimidated by going to next order.) After a later "breakthrough" for this project, I swear he said, "Now it's time to talk to the walrus," and he proceeded to give his thoughts on the next steps. But it was difficult to focus on what he was saying because I kept rewinding in my mind—did he say "talk to the walrus"? This phrase became a commonly used one with my friends in graduate school.

Edgar always liked to take hiking trips to exotic places. One of his legendary trips involved him and his fellow hikers being dropped off by plane, hiking through the snow, then meeting the plane again a week or so later to be picked up. Except the plane wasn't there when the hikers arrived to the pick-up point. I believe that it took at least a day before the plane finally showed up. Apparently the pilot who was supposed to pick them up was frantically circling trying to find them, but had the wrong location. With stories like this floating around, Edgar's PhD students would joke that we should get his signature on our dissertation before he left on his trips.

It's always a good feeling to get a draft to a co-author—it's off your desk, so you can think about something else for a while. But Edgar is so fast that within three hours you get the draft back, with thorough but barely legible handwritten revisions. The paper's back on your desk in no time!

During my time as a PhD student (and it's problably still true), Edgar's office was full of piles of paper, many rising from the ground to several feet in height. At one of my weekly meetings with him, I accidentally knocked one of the piles over. The horror! Fortunately the falling pile didn't have domino fantasies, and it didn't take down any more piles. I believe that many of these piles include calculations that have never been published.

Edgar once told me that he hopes to publish a perfect paper with no typos. I seem to recall that for one of his papers, a journal's British-izing algorithm apparently changed "Colorado" to "Colourado"—but I believe that this was caught before publication.

Edgar is a fun house guest. One evening when he stayed with us turned into a dance party—although that was probably due more to my wife than to Edgar. Another evening had us laughing at Edgar laughing at the cards he was dealt during a game of Cards Against Humanity. Edgar, you're always welcome to stay with us!

Edgar's story of leaving Czechoslovakia when he was young and reconnecting with Barbora later on would make a great movie. I can't do it justice here.

Marta Net

Reinhard Richter

Michel Rieutord

Alastair Rucklidge

Shigeru Shinomoto

Uwe Thiele

Scott Tremaine

Geoff Vallis

Arik Yochelis

José Manuel Vega