This is heartbreaking. I never got to work with Scott when I was at ADI and to be honest I was always kind of intimidated by his reputation. I did work closely with someone who had worked with Scott for years and he had plenty of stories of how Scott used to like to get two of his coworkers, who were hard core audiophiles, barking at each other by making a subtle comment and then letting them oscillate as he sat back and enjoyed the show. About two years before Scott retired he started eating lunch with my particular crew of lunatics. We were always the loud table. Cracking jokes and generally having fun while annoying the other tables. Scott, this legendary designer, icon of the industry, turned out to be one of the funniest people at the table. Some of his stories had us laughing so hard we went back to the lab crying. And it was give and take as we got him good on occasion too. I'm so glad I got the chance to meet the real Scott Wurcer and not just the legendary electron pusher. The world is a sadder place without him.
Back in the early CD days I was modding Phillips based players with his opamps. I spent countless hours listening and wondering who the mastermind creator might be. Well he certainly lit the flame driving my interest further into experimentation. Let's hope me passed his knowledge on to many. RIP..
Having designed in more than one of Scott's chips, as well as been in receipt of his kind help here I developed a certain affection for him even though we never met in person. His passing is a great loss to us all. One of Scott's quirks which I greatly appreciated was his provisioning for tweakers in his chip designs. Take for example the AD744 where he brought out an internal circuit node to a normally spare pin to give extra flexibility, even though it inconvenienced the design somewhat. Love that style, its an expression of his saying which @gpapag propagates in his .sig : 'I insist on respecting the means of the average person in their garage/basement'.
RIP Scott.
RIP Scott.
In addition to that he was perhaps one of the most self-effacing people I have ever known. I cannot remember a single instance of him ever bragging of his very considerable accomplishments. And he was very generous with his knowledge - helped me considerably with things like measuring the frequency response of the strain gauge cartridges I was experimenting with at the time. He also gifted me his portable battery operated TekScope which has isolated inputs (only scope I have ever owned that does.) And he was genuinely funny and kind. Loved good conversation, and good food. The friendship was cut short due to his illness; he was a very private person and I did not appreciate the gravity of the situation at the time he started to withdraw from his public life.
Many will miss him, there aren't in my experience a lot of people like him.
