Vikram Soni

"Upon closer inspection Bekenstein’s reasoning can be used to show that gravity becomes an entropic force near the horizon, and that the equations presented in section 3 are exactly valid. He argued that one has to choose a location slightly away from the black hole horizon at a distance of about the order of the Compton wave length, where we declare that the particle and the black hole have become one system. Let us say this location corresponds to choosing a holographic screen. The precise location of this screen can not be important, however, since there is not a natural preferred distance that one can choose. The equations should therefore not depend on small variations of this distance."

From:

On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton

My friend Vikram Soni really impressed me, after we heard Hawking's presentation of black hole radiation, he kept asking me: but where are the particles when created, inside or outside the horizon? I felt he was over my head. One of the few times in my life when I felt that somebody was smarter than me.

Now Verlinde tells us that it is slightly away, as Bekenstein understood.

I guess Vikram would've preferred to have Erik as a classmate, instead of me.

Of course we didn't know anything about holography, and all that. I am talking of 1975!

So it goes.