Robert J. Chassell (1946–2017) started working with GNU Emacs in 1985. He wrote and edited, taught Emacs and Emacs Lisp, and spoke throughout the world on software freedom. Chassell was a founding Director and Treasurer of the Free Software Foundation, Inc. He was co-author of the Texinfo manual, and edited more than a dozen other books. He graduated from Cambridge University, in England. He had an abiding interest in social and economic history and flew his own airplane.