I am duly impressed.
Don’t be. Working at IBM Research means you’re always around people like that. The best thing I think I’ve ever done was when I was consulting to Time/Life on their Programming Languages series. Bill Whitaker was the Air Force Colonel who had come up with the idea for DoD/I, but he said that he’d never be remembered for that. So I spent my consulting time telling everyone at the table all about Bill and when I got my copy of the book, I called Bill and read him ALL of the sections that talked about him and told him that now NO ONE would ever forget him. THAT was worthwhile!