It was Christmas 1989 when my fiancée handed me a box labeled Mathematica 2, the Student Version for DOS. She was a student at the time. That night I began to play with it; in no time I was using it to do a problem in tensor analysis. I had some experience with Maple prior to this, but I found Mathematica much easier to use. Months went by, and—having no shame—I contacted the Wolfram marketing department. I said something like, “I am a freelance writer; I would like to write for you in return for the most recent copy for Windows.” I sent along a very technical review as a sample.

A month later I got the new box. I am now an accredited consultant and an independent trainer. In November of 2000 my fiancée-turned-wife Heather passed away from breast cancer. Wolfram Research provided a nice gift for her memorial, something that I will always be grateful for. Now I run a nonprofit, Madison Area Science and Technology, and Wolfram is still providing incredible support—including several licenses to support our computational science institute and the summer school we are hosting. Thanks for always being there!

(George Hrabovsky’s Stellar Modeling notebook.)