Remembering RL "Bob" Morgan
- Rod Widdowson
17-July-2012
RL "Bob" Morgan passed away last Thursday, July 12, after a four year battle with cancer.
Among his many contributions, Bob was the founding visionary for the Shibboleth project and its driving wheel during its formative days. In February 2000, at a Common Solutions group meeting with several leading higher ed IT architects, Bob inspired us to think of the hardest problem we could find – interrealm authentication and authorization – and then tackle it.
Out of that call to arms came SAML, Shibboleth, federated identity, and other foundational elements of Internet identity today. Bob also was one the co-authors of the original SAML standard, and was central to the promotion of Shibboleth in public and private sectors, and with the federations that leverage the software. (His fingerprints are also on the naming of Shibboleth.) Beyond his technical contributions here and in other areas, Bob was a dear friend to many in the Shibboleth community. He will be greatly missed.
A memorial page has been set up for Bob, where members of the Shibboleth team are just some of the many people sharing memories of Bob.