Jim Gray

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James N. Gray 2006

James Nicholas "Jim" Gray (born January 12, 1944 in San Francisco ; missing in the Pacific Ocean since January 28, 2007 ; declared dead on May 16, 2012) was an American computer scientist who was awarded the 1998 Turing Award for pioneering additions and Contributions to databases and research on transmission processes and technical leadership in system implementation was recognized.

life and work

Gray, the son of an American spy and inventor and an English teacher, grew up in Europe and studied at the University of California, Berkeley , where he received his Bachelor of Science degree in mathematical engineering (mathematics and statistics) in 1966 . His doctorate in computer science followed in 1969, where he was the first recipient of a doctorate in this subject at the university. Gray worked as a researcher and software developer at a number of companies including IBM (at the Almaden Research Center , 1969-1980), Tandem (1980-1990), and the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC, 1990-1995). Until his disappearance at sea in early 2007, he worked as a technical assistant at Microsoft Research , the research division of Microsoft Corporation , in San Francisco.

Gray was involved in the establishment of several key database systems and systems for process transfer, including IBM System R . He also published a number of scientific articles in specialist journals.

The basic ideas for Microsoft Research's World Wide Telescope project , which made satellite images available to the general public for the first time, came from Gray. In 2008 Microsoft Research dedicated the project to Jim Gray.

Gray served on the National Research Council's Computer Science and Telecommunications Board from 1990 to 1999, on the Presidential Advisory Committee on Next Generation Internet, High Performance Computing, and Information Technology (PITAC) from 1997 to 2001, and in Computer and Information from 2002 to 2004 Science and Engineering Advisory Committee of the National Science Foundation . He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences , the National Academy of Engineering , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the European Academy of Sciences . He was a Fellow of ACM and IEEE , and a Technical Fellow of Microsoft. Gray continued to supervise scientific work and a. by Werner Vogels and Sergei Brin .

Gray was married twice and had three children.

Disappeared at sea

After never returning from a day-long sailing excursion alone to the Farallon Islands in the Pacific near San Francisco to scatter his mother's ashes, Gray was joined by his on the evening of January 28, 2007 Wife reported missing.

The Coast Guard used boats, helicopters and airplanes to search for Gray, and National Park Service and police personnel came ashore . The search was officially stopped on February 1, 2007. Friends and work colleagues, including Bill Gates , Larry Ellison , Rick Rashid and Sergei Brin , continued it with their own resources and documented their efforts in a blog and on a specially set up website. The friends also stopped their active search at sea (including with a NASA training aircraft) on February 16, 2007, but continued to search for traces of the sailboat using Mechanical Turk and more than 12,000 volunteers on satellite images and on the seabed until the end of May 2007 . In addition, posters were put up in marinas along the North American Pacific coast from Canada to Mexico asking for information about Gray's whereabouts.

As of the summer of 2007, his family did not yet believe that Gray was dead. An event in his honor was held on May 31, 2008 at the University of California, Berkeley. It was expressly not a commemorative event, as his fate was still unclear. On May 16, 2012, a court in San Francisco declared Jim Gray dead at the request of his wife, with the death certificate issued for the end of the five-year waiting period for missing persons under California law, January 28, 2012.

Web links

Commons : James N. Gray  - Collection of Images, Videos, and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Steve Silberman: Inside the High Tech Hunt for a Missing Silicon Valley Legend. In: Wired . July 24, 2007 (English).
  2. ^ Coast Guard searches for missing SF boater: 63-year-old man failed to return from trip to Farallon Islands. In: San Francisco Chronicle. January 29, 2007.
  3. ^ A b Nick Wingfield: Closure in Disappearance of Computer Scientist. New York Times Bits Blog, May 18, 2012.
  4. ^ Friends, Colleagues Plan Tribute to Jim Gray. ( Memento of the original from November 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Press release of the IEEE Computer Society, January 2, 2008 (English). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.computer.org
  5. ^ Jim Gray, Alexander S. Szalay: The World-Wide Telescope, an Archetype for Online Science. June 2002 (English).
  6. ↑ Frequently Asked Questions. ( Memento of March 2, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) WorldWide Telescope, (English).
  7. ^ Book of Members. (PDF) Accessed July 26, 2016 (English).
  8. ↑ a b Donna Carnes: Ode to a Sailor. In: ACM Queue. Volume 6, No. 3, July 28, 2008.
  9. ^ Jim Doyle: Sea search for missing Microsoft scientist. In: San Francisco Chronicle. January 30, 2007
  10. ^ Coast Guard Suspends Search for Dr. Jim Gray. United States Coast Guard, February 1, 2007 (English).
  11. ↑ Plan for Today from Tom Barclay. ( Memento of the original from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Tenacious Search Weblog, February 2, 2007 (English).  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / openphi.net
  12. ↑ Helpfindjim.com ( Memento of the original from May 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.helpfindjim.com
  13. ↑ Friends Stop Search for Missing Sailor. ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: San Francisco Chronicle. February 16, 2007 (English). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.highbeam.com
  14. ↑ postering status (2/13/07). ( Memento of the original from February 23, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Tenacious Search Weblog, February 13, 2007 (English).  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / openphi.net
  15. ^ Brier Dudley: Work of computer genius Jim Gray flourished amid research freedom. In: The Seattle Times. June 2, 2008 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Gray, Jim
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gray, James N .; Gray, James Nicholas (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American computer scientist
DATE OF BIRTH January 12, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH San Francisco
DATE OF DEATH after January 28, 2007