Mel Hinich died suddenly on September 6. Here is his “personal webpage”:http://hinich.webhost.utexas.edu/ and his “Wikipedia entry”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvin_J._Hinich. “Here”:http://sites.la.utexas.edu/melhinich/ is a list of remembrances from colleagues and friends. A glance at his “vita”:http://hinich.webhost.utexas.edu/Myvita.pdf will reveal his singular intellect: publications in journals ranging from the American Journal of Political Science to the Journal of the American Statistical Association to the Journal of Oceanic Engineering to Signal Processing to the Journal of Macroeconomics.
I was a colleauge of Mel’s for 2 years at the University of Texas. For some reason, he decided I was worth his company, and he invited me twice to dinner at his house — a take-out rotisserie chicken, a bottle of wine, nothing fancy. Of course, I spent most of my time there listening to him talk. But his monologues never lacked for verve and erudition. He was irascible but brilliant and always generous to me and, apparently, to many others as well. I will miss him.