'I met George in 1970 when he burst on the algebraic geometry scene with a spectacular PhD thesis. His thesis gave a wonderful analysis of the singularities of the subvarieties ${\displaystyle W_{r}}$  of the Jacobian of a curve obtained by adding the curve to itself ${\displaystyle r}$  times inside its Jacobian. This was one of the major themes that he pursued throughout his career: understanding the interaction of a curve with its Jacobian and especially to the map from the ${\displaystyle r}$ -fold symmetric product of the curve to the Jacobian. In his thesis he gave a determinantal representation both of ${\displaystyle W_{r}}$  and of its tangent cone at all its singular points, which gives you a complete understanding of the nature of these singularities' – David Mumford

'One of the things that distinguished his work was the total mastery with which he used higher cohomology. A paper which, I believe, every new student of algebraic geometry should read, is his elementary proof of the Riemann-Roch theorem on curves: “Algebraic Curves” in Crelle, 1977. That such an old result could be treated with new insight was the work of a master.' – David Mumford

• Mumford, David (2002), "In memoriam: George R. Kempf 1944–2002" (PDF), American Journal of Mathematics, 124 (6): iii–iv, doi:10.1353/ajm.2002.0040, ISSN 0002-9327, MR 1939780, S2CID 120437883
• George Kempf at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

• George Rushing Kempf