Today the world mourns the loss of Edsger Wybe Dijkstra, a pioneering Dutch computer scientist and professor who passed away on August 6th, 2002 at the age of 72. Born on May 11th, 1930, Dijkstra is best remembered as a leader in the field of computer science, having developed groundbreaking algorithms and made major contributions in the development of the core elements of computing, such as software programming languages, concurrency, distributed computing and operating systems. He was also a frequent lecturing professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Dijkstra received numerous awards and honors in recognition of his work, including the Turing Award in 1972, the highest honor in computer science, the Royal Society of Sciences’ Lanchester Prize in 1972, and the ACM Special Interest Group on Operating Systems’ Software Engineering Award in 1983. He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences from 1982-2002. Though he is gone, Dijkstra's work will continue to influence generations of computer scientists and computational thinkers. He will be deeply missed by all who knew him.