Want a recommendation letter, but the professor passed away I am in the process of collecting recommendations for my PhD.
I was the best-performing student in final exams on three different courses, all given by a single professor. (The results of the exams are anonymized and published for a short period in my university.) These were the courses related to the fields I want to do research in.
There is nothing else this professor could have written about me - I didn't do any research in their group.
Sadly, the professor passed away after a short and severe illness last month.
Is there any way I can get a recommendation letter which acknowledges that I was the best student in these courses? Would another professor write that, given the death of the professor in question?
Your best letters will come from professors who know more about you than that you did well in their courses. I hope you have some of those.
You could say in a cover letter that your exams in this persons courses were tops in each, based on anonymized department reports. I doubt that you'd be required to provide evidence for that.