I am sorry to inform you of the decease of Pål Wessel. He sadly passed away in his home in Nittedal on March 26, 2024, following a battle with brain cancer.
Pål’s family have created a memorial website where people can share their memories of him, look through photos, donate to continue Pål’s legacy at SOEST (University of Hawai’i) or to help cover their moving expenses, and see information about the upcoming Celebration of Life.
This is truly heartbreaking news! Paul’s legacy lives on not only in our minds but also in our work and the science we pursue. The world feels smaller with this news, but the significance of his work will always be remembered.
“I do hope that among the thousands of GMT users there will be a small subset who feel perhaps they should give back by involving themselves at some level in the GMT community and thus ensure GMT will not disappear overnight when I do.”
– From: Wessel, P. (2024). The origins of the generic mapping tools: From table tennis to geoscience. Perspectives of Earth and Space Scientists , 5 (1), e2023CN000231. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023CN000231
Heartbreaking news, my deepest condolences.
R. I. P. Paul
Oh my goodness! I’m so sorry to learn of this sad event! Pål, you were such a great help through the years. You will be dearly missed! Darn - this is the second colleague I’ve lost to brain cancer. Just enjoyed a great solar eclipse to learn this. Rest well, my friend. Condolences to your family and colleagues, GMT and beyond.
It is with a heavy heart that I hear the passing of Pål Wessel, the founder of the GMT. My journey with GMT began approximately 15 years ago, during my master’s studies, when I first learned to navigate this software. From that point onwards, GMT has been an integral part of my research toolkit, employed in what seems like every paper I have published. Looking back, each manuscript and every instance of using GMT to process data and create exquisite figures, I realize now was a form of silent dialogue with Pål Wessel himself. GMT has not only elevated the art of scientific illustration but has set the gold standard for sophistication and taste in graphical representation. The creation and refinement of GMT, a task to which Pål Wessel dedicated his life, has endowed it with an irreplaceable aesthetic and enduring vitality.
Oh wow. I was so sad to hear this. I only knew Paul through email, but he was always so kind and helpful. A big loss for the community but hopefully the others involved in this initiative can keep the ball rolling. Thanks for all that you do!
@Esteban82 , if you have contact with his family, please convey our condolences to them. More than all the work and achievements he realized, more than the communities and generations of young (and older too) minds he has wholeheartedly and empathetically helped in many ways, we was a family member and a friend to his beloved ones. I believe his legacy is not the tools he developed, but the fond moments they shared. I hope that their pain will pass but their memory remains.
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GMT is the backbone of pretty much all of my work, and I am sure there are countless other scientists that can say the same. I am forever grateful for all the the work that Paul and the rest of the GMT community has done to make GMT the useful set of tools it is. Paul very quickly implemented several bug and feature requests I had over the years, something that I very much appreciated. My condolences.
It’s unfortunate nobody can escape death. May the GMT guru have peaceful rest. I personally owe him an ocean of ‘thank-you’ for creating such a wonderful free software for the geosciences. My condolence to his family and loved ones.
Very sad. I never met Paul, but heard many great things about him from people all across the Earth Sciences. I’m forever grateful for his dedication and hard work to the discipline
