I was shocked and saddened to hear about a week ago that Ted Odell, a mathematician to whom I owe a lot, died suddenly on January 9th of a heart attack while he was travelling to this year’s joint AMS/MAA meeting in San Diego. He was 65, but seemed a lot younger.

Ted was a world leader in Banach space theory, and in particular in the infinite-dimensional theory. The wry and slightly enigmatic smile you see in the photo was extremely characteristic: if I imagine Ted, I automatically imagine him with exactly that smile. Less clear from the photo, though perhaps it can be guessed from the camera angle, is that he was extremely tall: he belonged to a handful of mathematicians I know who make me feel short (Tom Sanders and Alex Scott being two others).

I first met Ted when I went to my first ever conference, in…