Roger Nichols, the original engineer on all of the Steely Dan records from the 1970's, died last month after an extended battle with pancreatic cancer. His website is here. His fight against cancer has all but bankrupted his family. I donated to his cancer fund and I encourage others to do the same.
Nichols was a product of his time - he grew up in California interested in all areas of science, including astronomy and aeronautics (he was a qualified pilot, and counted John Denver among his close friends until Denver's untimely death in 1997). However, his inestimable contribution was to the art of studio recording for Steely Dan, where his own obsessive inquiring perfectionism found a perfect foil in Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, whose New York origins were almost diametrically opposed to his own upbringing. Nichols invented drum loops before they were given that name (the backing drum track on "Show Biz Kids" was rigged from a length of tape that was looped around various points in the console room to allow for a steady drum track), and later invented the first computer (named Wendel) to perfectly align drum parts for the album "Gaucho". Nichols worked on a rich variety of recording projects over the years, and continued to engineer and assist Becker and Fagen on Steely Dan and solo projects. He was a quiet giant, a man whose name rarely made it into the public eye, but he leaves many artists grateful for his engineering skills, and recording engineers the world over either use his products or have been influenced by his skills in advancing the recording of music.