Grateful for the important and remarkable contributions Prof. Heesterman has given to indology since his 1957 thesis on the Rajasuya (produced under J. Gonda), the passing away of Prof. Heesterman still feels like a great actual loss as he has continued to work and publish well into the 21st century including very recently on the Mahabharata. In Vedism, his first and main but not his only field of research, the last contribution I know of was the one to the Ch. Malamoud Festschrift "The Dakṣiṇā and the Development of Sacrifice" (2012). Prof. Heesterman still used to preferably WRITE his scientific work by hand, without use of typewriter let alone computer. The handwritten version was then typed and corrected.