I wondered the same thing. He’s still alive and working. Not even mentioned in the acknowledgment section. Besides, it’s a terribly ambitious name for a real-time GI solution. It’d make some sense for an unbiased path tracer.

For anyone out of the loop, his paper "The Rendering Equation" is very readable.

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.63....

Good idea. One prominent precedent: Haskell Curry's widow was asked about using the name Haskell [1]:

> * Hudak and Wise were asked to write to Curry’s widow, Virginia Curry, to ask if she would mind our naming the language after her husband. *

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...