Editor’s Note: Martin’s obituary, courtesy of Howard Butler, is available here.
Martin Isenburg, 49, recently of Sámara, Costa Rica by way of Germany, passed away in his home about September 9th, 2021. Martin was the proprietor of Rapidlasso and creator of the widely used LAStools, LASzip, and PulseWaves software for point-cloud and lidar processing. Martin was a vocal advocate for unrestricted release of public scanning information, instrumental in the development of the ASPRS LAS 1.4 specification, and provider of access to his techniques and approaches through open source software such as LAStools, LASzip, and PulseWaves.
Martin Isenburg, 1972-2021
Howard Butler, president of Hobu, Inc., an open source software consultancy focused on lidar, point clouds, and geospatial software, based in Iowa City, Iowa., first shared this information. Martin’s passing was seemingly confirmed by his sister, Mara Isenburg and his Costa Rican Community Facebook page.