I’ve been a light reader of Stephen Wolfram’s work over the years. I am grateful he’s taken the time to write this tribute. May she rest in peace and condolence

I’ve been a light reader of Stephen Wolfram’s work over the years. I am grateful he’s taken the time to write this tribute. May she rest in peace and condolences to Stephen. How I considered Stephen coming in to this: 1) he is wonderfully generous with his ideas and knowledge, especially towards the young. I think this is an extremely good quality. 2) he attracts envy from many people, partly because of his successes, but also because of his manner. I feel his manner is often totally unintentional to cause upset, but also I think he’s so unashamedly himself and how he wants to be that it is sometimes verging on rude, which people hold against him (mostly unfairly, sometimes fairly) 3) given his commitment to work I always wondered about how he balanced his personal life amongst all that What I found very interesting about this letter was how his personal relationship seems to have been in keeping with the man we see on the outside: 1) the first thing in the lists on his wife, as well as what he spends significant time on in the letter, are her intellectual capabilities. He is a man of intellect through and through, and it shows in how he writes of his wife. 2) he mentions how he has failed to collaborate with her for their entire marriage because of their strong wills. It strikes me as somewhat sad that there’s this failure to connect somehow. It might be that a prioritisation of the intellect in life holds us back from virtues. 3) there were moments where he talks about how she was intuitively right and how he had to work things out by taking “the long way”. I just get the feeling that a lot of their relationship was somehow like this - where something obvious to the normal intuition is something to be worked out by the intellect. 4) I think there might be an element of regret in this letter. A regret that perhaps a connection could have been different had one chosen to indulge one’s intellect less. I feel like this moment perhaps made Stephen’s mind pause for a moment on that - an all too human pause.