Grant Imahara, known for hosting the Discovery Channel’s long-running Mythbusters program and Netflix’s White Rabbit Project, has died suddenly of a brain aneurysm at the age of 49.
“We are heartbroken to hear this sad news about Grant. He was an important part of our Discovery family and a really wonderful man. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family,” a representative for Discovery said in a statement on Monday.
Imahara studied electrical engineering at the University of Southern California before trying his hand at robotics, cutting his teeth in the industry for nine years at Lucasfilm, working in the company’s THX and Industrial Light and Magic divisions.
Imahara worked on the original trio of Star Wars prequels, two of The Matrix sequels, The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, among many others.
He then turned his attention to the silver screen and drew on this experience to construct robots, computers and hi-tech gizmos for Mythbusters, often participating in the shows’ many, often outlandish experiments to test myths with his robotics expertise.
Mythbusters co-host Adam Savage tweeted his condolences Monday, describing Imahara as a “truly brilliant engineer, artist and performer, but also just such a generous, easygoing, and gentle PERSON.”
Co-host Kari Byron shared an image with Imahara with the caption: “Somedays I wish I had a time machine.”
Imahara recently went viral for building an animatronic Baby Yoda from the Disney+ show Star Wars: The Mandalorian, showing the franchise was never far from his heart.
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