He explains in the comments that he meant it predictively, in that their work would survive long beyond them. I don't think programming has been around on a large scale long enough for dead masters who've actually died, unless you'd consider Turing, Church, and Shannon to be programmers. Hell, even the inventor/discoverer of Lisp is still around.
edit: I added "Discovered" because that's the way many Lisp fans, including pg, refer to it.
You obviously haven't read about apply/eval. SICP is a great book. It's even available online! There's also the lectures.
SICP: http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/
The part about apply/eval: http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-26.html...
The lectures: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussma... (apply/eval is discussed in Lecture 7, the meta-circular evaluator. I'm not sure if you could understand it without watching the previous lectures, however they're all wonderful)
edit: I added "Discovered" because that's the way many Lisp fans, including pg, refer to it.