Two Takes on Andrew Lange's Suicide

Dontcha just love the Higher Ed worldview that translates the suicide of Andrew Lange into news of increased "counseling " jobs at CalTech.  Equally affecting is  Higher Ed's subtext that juxtaposes self-murder with the supposed raison de vivre of one million dollars in prize money.

... lost in time like tears in the rain

Andrew Lange let us see that the universe is flat. In his end, he showed how despite a self  that comprehends time behind and time before a man can self-determine his place in the cosmos by choosing his time to die.  In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius has words fit for this great cosmologist.  

You have the power to strip away many superfluous troubles located wholly in your judgement, and to possess a large room for yourself embracing in thought the whole cosmos, to consider everlasting time, to think of the rapid change in the parts of each thing, of how short it is from birth until dissolution, and how the void before birth and that after dissolution are equally infinite.

Altogether the interval is small between birth and death; and consider how much trouble, and in company with sort of people and in what feeble body this interval is laboriously passed. Do not then consider life is a thing of any value. For look to the immensity of time behind thee, and to the time which is before thee, another boundless space. In this infinity then what is the difference between him who lives three days and him who lives three generations?