Thursday
My good friend and colleague Dick Seegers from the Netherlands died yesterday – 21st September, 2016.
He first contacted me many years ago when had been researching Gold’s Stock-to-flow ratio and discovered that I had written the original article on the subject.
He noted that subsequent authors had not credited me and wished to do so in his own writings.
We continued our email correspondence over all the subsequent years. We never met, never saw each other and never spoke, yet we formed an unusually close friendship based on an eclectic approach to life. I never even knew what he looked like or how old he was. I still don’t and it does not matter. Our meeting ground was in the mind. Those who wander slightly off the well-beaten track find it easy to recognise the very few others who do the same.
Dick was an economist, chemical engineer, inventor, translator (into English) and student of maths and money. He did me the kindness of giving the final edit to Dawn of Gold. I asked it of him because I knew that he would be one of the few that would be able to follow the logic. Logic is so impossible to confront for those bound into the dogma of their own monodisciplinary academic prisons. Dick had no such bars.
Dick had been very sick for a while and decided to go out at a time and place of his choosing. I received his farewell email the day before and sadly counted down the hours.
I had not realised that coping with a death is easier than coping with a death that is about to come.
My inbox will never again hold the same promise.
Vale my friend and confidant Dick Seegers. I will miss you terribly.