I know that he and Jim Williams were true geniuses, but it is really, really hard to respect someone with a workspace like those guys had. Mostly because it makes younger, greener folks think it's OK to be completely disorganized and have $3,000 worth of $0.001 parts tied up in half-built (or even fully built) test circuits that get used once and forgotten.
If it weren't for the mind-blowing amount of stuff these guys created and improved, they would not have been allowed to have desks like those.
I'm not against an untidy desk. I'm not trying to promote some stupid clean=better point of view, but these guys didn't respect their own workspaces, for some reason. They didn't see a need for themselves to even shove boards into boxes and stack them up. They finish a test on a board, set it down somewhere, and it wouldn't move for 30 years. I can't put my finger on what it is about that, but it's not a thing that is common among mentally healthy people.
I didn't get to meet either of them, but I'm sure this stupid opinion of mine would have changed had I met either of them. They had a great trait that is very, very rare today - the willingness to teach others, and to take the time necessary to do it properly.