Gregg Kellogg has passed away
11 comments
·September 11, 2025weinzierl
wjnc
"If you know Rebecca (many reading this won't), you know how amazing she is. She's worked with many cancer patients, though her work at Commonweal, and her numerous award-winning cook books. She would call me her "rock", but really, she's mine. I have been unbelievably lucky in life, and particularly in my relationship with Rebecca.
I've really accomplished my life goals – my family is well looked after, I've had a very rewarding career in Tech; particularly the last 15 years working with some amazing people at the World WIde Web Consortium. If there's ever a good time to go out, it's now. Anything else would just be gravy on top."
The only goals that really matter. Love, family and professional and personal joy.
zwnow
Professional joy does not matter. Do not make your job your life. Family matters, personal goals matter, professional goals however do not. When my father had cancer the only question his employer ever asked was "when is he coming back to work? We need him here". He passed not long after. Your work does not care about you, no matter if its a corporation or a tiny business. If your personal goal is to be a professional at your job making as much money as possible, honestly, that's just sad.
languagehacker
I really admired Gregg early on in my career. He gave a fantastic talk in Austin, Texas back in about 2007 or 2008 for a Semantic Web Meetup (at a venue called "The Boom Boom Room" funnily enough) back when I was working as the resident search expert and linguist for an SEO consultancy (remember those?). He talked about RDF, OWL, and SPARQL, and some of the iterative ways we could get there on the sites we're building in a way that had me enthusiastic for the web's future. I spoke with him after the conference, and if I remember correctly, he encouraged me to start looking into Lucene after hearing about my job.
Several years later, I'm living in the Bay Area and working for Wikia (now Fandom), acting as their resident Solr expert after taking his advice to heart. Wikia was investing in their structured data initiatives, and ended up bringing Gregg onto exactly the team I was attached to in order to investigate how to apply his area of expertise to our vast store of user-generated, semi-structured data. The opportunity to work with such a talented researcher in a consultative capacity was a tremendous learning experience.
I felt privileged to get to work with someone I had admired early on and made an impact into the trajectory of my career. The takeaway from this is probably that you don't necessarily know whose future your might touch with a presentation or with friendly advice casually offered at a conference or meetup.
Something tells me I'm one of countless cases where Gregg didn't just push the science of structured data and the semantic web forward, but helped to mold expert practitioners through his kindness and enthusiasm for the work. In this way, his legacy will be long-lasting and inestimable.
andsoitis
I you don't know who Gregg Kellogg was: https://greggkellogg.net/foaf
poszlem
> In August 4th, I went into the MarinHealth Emergency Room, due to increased stomach pain on top of symptoms which became more acute in June. I've had a reduced appetite, with consequent weight loss, for about the last year. I had been fighting to keep weight on for some time, then in July, Rebecca and I went back to our usual haunt at the Hotel Wailea in Maui, which we love. Towards the end of the trip, I had a sudden and dramatic loss of appetite, more than the usual.
It’s incredible that someone could have such symptoms for a year and not a single doctor ordered an abdominal ultrasound. Given the outcome, this might have been a blessing, he was able to live his last year without knowing about the disease, which realistically isn’t curable. But at the same time, it could just as easily have been another abdominal tumor where a year’s delay would have made a huge difference.
May he rest in peace and bless his family.
dcminter
Pancreatic cancer can be curable in some cases - see the Whipple procedure:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancreaticoduodenectomy
That said, it would depend on several other factors, not least catching the tumour early enough - and it looks like a pretty tough thing to go through even if successful.
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Findecanor
Don't underestimate human incompetence and pettiness. I have a similar story, and now have to live with an ostomy and chronic latent cancer that could flare up at any time.
Very sad to hear.
If you read Gregg's Health FAQ be sure not to miss the "You seem oddly calm about this." section. You could otherwise get a wrong impression.
Life really was not kind to him, but he doesn't seem to have let it get in his way.
https://greggkellogg.net/health-faq.html