Bill Fink of Belleville, Illinois, passed away last Wednesday. His brother, M.C. Fink, wrote his obituary to give him "the most memorable sendoff possible." Fink had been ill and had been in hospice care. To answer your question, yes, they did try turning him off and on again. A friend left an appropriate comment underneath his online obituary.
I only knew Bill for a few CPU cycles, but without exception, the User Experience (UX) was bug free. The times Bill and I shared the same memory and process space happened to be at events like DigiGirlz and FIRST Robotics where Bill shared his passion for technology with youth. You didn't need detailed event tracing or a full memory dump to know that Bill truly cared for others.
My condolences.
Quite a few friends and co-workers came to the reddit thread to attest that Fink was a great guy who had an awesome sense of humor. Here’s an article he wrote last year about he got his dream job as a Technical Evangelist for Microsoft. He never lost his enthusiasm.
Update: This post has been edited to reflect that Fink's brother wrote the obituary.