Celebratio Mathematica

I am saddened by the un­timely passing of Geor­gia Ben­k­art. We be­came friends and col­leagues when I first vis­ited Madis­on in 1994 as a Ful­bright Fel­low. Since then we met on many oc­ca­sions in many places. I am deeply in­debted to Geor­gia for sup­port­ing At­lantic Al­gebra Centre (AAC) in St. John’s, New­found­land, Canada, of which I was the or­gan­izer and dir­ect­or. Geor­gia was a co-or­gan­izer and a plen­ary speak­er of the Work­shop “Loc­ally Fi­nite Lie al­geb­ras” at the Ban­ff In­ter­na­tion­al Re­search Sta­tion in 2003, and gave ex­cel­lent lec­tures to the par­ti­cipants of the work­shops held by AAC at Bonne Bay Mar­ine Sta­tion of Me­mori­al Uni­versity of New­found­land in 2010 and 2012. Her lec­tures were amaz­ing: she could talk about dif­fi­cult sub­jects in a play­ful man­ner, mak­ing really hard stuff ac­cess­ible to wide audi­ences. She was a very warm and kind per­son. We will miss her very much!