I met him about 10 years ago at an astronomy conference. Very nice man, and a great speaker. His talk was about the influence the appearance of comets had on p

I met him about 10 years ago at an astronomy conference. Very nice man, and a great speaker. His talk was about the influence the appearance of comets had on politics in classical civilizations. It was an excellent presentation. As a visual aid, he brought out Roman era coins, from his personal collection, which commemorated comets and various leaders, including Cleopatra if I remember correctly. As he finished talking about each one, he would hand it down into the audience to be passed around and viewed by everyone. I remember thinking that that was pretty brave of him, considering the size of the audience and the low lighting conditions. But he got them all back. He will be missed.