He was my PhD first cousin twice removed. Although that doesn't actually mean anything, it's interesting to see the connections.
I wrote my first BASIC programs in 1977, and promptly wrote a compiler for a restricted subset of BASIC into Z80, in the restricted subset, compiled the compiler, and had a machine language compiler for BASIC into Z80, all running in 14 KB of RAM.
Heady times.
Thank you Thomas Kurtz ... I wish I'd had the chance to meet and chat with you.