Sige-Yuki Kuroda, Professor Emeritus and Research Professor of Linguistics at UCSD, died in La Jolla, California, on February 25, 2009, after a long illness. Known almost universally as Yuki, Kuroda was the father of modern Japanese linguistics. His 1965 MIT dissertation, Generative Studies in the Japanese Language, written under the direction of Noam Chomsky, provided the seeds of theoretical studies of Japanese that continue to have an impact today.
Click here to jump to a tribute webpage, from which the above obituary is cited. I am deeply saddened.