Bill Sandholm.

Very sad to learn that Bill Sandholm passed away. People elsewhere have written about his great contributions to evolutionary game theory. Here I write a few personal lines.
Bill was a mentor to me during my graduate school years. I learned many things, both insightful and mundane, about work and about life, from him. He had the patience of reading though my first papers and offering hand-written comments throughout them. He was a role model as a researcher, teacher, and human being. He was also a friend whose advice I trusted when I was a junior academic, especially during difficult times.

Bill was passionate about his work and devoted to his family. He was a fun person to go for a walk and have a conversation with. Though I could never hope to match his passion for the outdoors, we do have a few things in common: we both dislike badly written papers and we both like Montreal bagels.

It was incredible luck on my part to have known Bill. I was counting on seeing him sometime soon, but the pandemic had foiled my plan and now fate has made it impossible. He will be sorely missed. To adapt a line from Auden:

I thought that friendship would last forever: I was wrong.

A link to Bill’s obituary:

https://www.cressfuneralservice.com/obituary/William-SandholmIII

UW Econ’s tribute:

https://econ.wisc.edu/2020/07/10/in-memoriam/

A tribute written by Rakesh Vohra:

William Sandholm