A month ago, I heard from John Kimmel, our dear editor at Chapman & Hall, had decided to retire soon. I was a little sad that he wouldn’t be here for my future books. The last time I met John was at rstudio::conf(2020) in SF. I asked him of his age, but I don’t remember the exact number now. It should be 70+ (perhaps 74), so the retirement is definitely well-deserved.
I was first introduced to John in 2012 by another author, and didn’t think much about him in the beginning. A few months later, I heard randomly a praise of John from an attendee of the Chinese R …