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正文
[Source: Communications of ACM 11/08]
It’s been almost two years since Jim Gray went missing off the coast of Northern California, an absence that continues to resonate throughout the computer science community. In the November issue, friends and colleagues pay tribute to this esteemed visionary, sharing stories and insights into one of the industry’s most respected scientists.
Fellow pioneers in database research Michael Stonebraker and David DeWitt recall Gray’s multiple contributions to the field of database systems and how his work has transformed our daily lives. And Alexander Szalay writes of Gray the astronomer, noting how his own collaboration with Gray created some of the world’s largest astronomy databases, enabling astronomers to test many avant-garde ideas in practice and see the cosmos in ways never before possible.
Gray played an instrumental role in the initial discussions to reposition Communications as a trusted source for research, as well as of practical and trend-setting editorial content. He understood the editorial interests of academics and practitioners intimately, believing there were ways to satisfy them all within ACM’s flagship publication. Just months before his disappearance, he lent his support to Communications’ Research Highlights section, nominating a paper by Chris Stolte, Diane Tang, and Pat Hanrahan on the Polaris system. So enthusiastic was Gray about the paper, he wrote the original Technical Perspective that would ultimately accompany it. This issue presents both.
================= Info from Wiki ================
Jim Gray (computer scientist)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
James Nicholas "Jim" Gray
Born: 1944
Nationality: American
Fields: Computer Science
Institutions: IBM, Tandem Computers, DEC, Microsoft
Alma mater: University of California, Berkeley
Notable awards: Turing Award
James Nicholas "Jim" Gray (born 1944, lost at sea January 28, 2007) was an American computer scientist who received the Turing Award in 1998 "for seminal contributions to database and transaction processing research and technical leadership in system implementation."
Biography
Gray studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned his B.S. in Engineering Mathematics (Math and Statistics) in 1966 and his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1969. He was the first recipient of a Ph.D. from Berkeley's Computer Science Department.
Gray pursued his career primarily working as a researcher and software designer at a number of industrial companies, including IBM, Tandem Computers, and DEC. He was a Technical Fellow for Microsoft Research in San Francisco, beginning in 1995.
Work
Gray contributed to several major database and transaction processing systems, including the System R while at IBM, TerraServer-USA and Skyserver for Microsoft. Among his best known achievements are granular database locking, two-tier transaction commit semantics, and the data cube operator for data warehousing applications. He also helped in the development of Virtual Earth.
Disappearance at sea and search
During a short solo sailing trip to the Farallon Islands near San Francisco to scatter his mother's ashes, his 40-foot yacht, Tenacious, was reported missing on Sunday, January 28, 2007. The Coast Guard searched for four days using a C-130 plane, helicopters, and patrol boats but found no sign of the vessel.
However, Gray's boat was equipped with an automatically deployable EPIRB (Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon), which should have deployed and begun transmitting the instant his vessel sank. The area around the Farallon Islands where Gray was sailing is also well north of the East-West ship channel used by freighters entering and leaving San Francisco Bay. The weather was clear that day and no ships reported striking his boat, nor were any distress radio transmissions reported.
On February 1, 2007, the DigitalGlobe satellite did a scan of the area, generating thousands of images.[9] The images were posted to Amazon Mechanical Turk in order to distribute the work of searching through them, in hopes of spotting his boat.
On February 16, 2007, the Friends of Jim Gray Group suspended their search, but continue to follow any important leads. The family ended its search May 31, 2007. The massive high-tech effort did not reveal any new clues.
The University of California, Berkeley hosted a tribute to Gray and his life on May 31, 2008. The conference included sessions delivered by Richard Rashid and David Vaskevitch. Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope software is dedicated to Gray. In 2008, Microsoft announced the opening of a research center in Madison, Wisconsin, to be named after Jim Gray.
It’s been almost two years since Jim Gray went missing off the coast of Northern California, an absence that continues to resonate throughout the computer science community. In the November issue, friends and colleagues pay tribute to this esteemed visionary, sharing stories and insights into one of the industry’s most respected scientists.
Fellow pioneers in database research Michael Stonebraker and David DeWitt recall Gray’s multiple contributions to the field of database systems and how his work has transformed our daily lives. And Alexander Szalay writes of Gray the astronomer, noting how his own collaboration with Gray created some of the world’s largest astronomy databases, enabling astronomers to test many avant-garde ideas in practice and see the cosmos in ways never before possible.
Gray played an instrumental role in the initial discussions to reposition Communications as a trusted source for research, as well as of practical and trend-setting editorial content. He understood the editorial interests of academics and practitioners intimately, believing there were ways to satisfy them all within ACM’s flagship publication. Just months before his disappearance, he lent his support to Communications’ Research Highlights section, nominating a paper by Chris Stolte, Diane Tang, and Pat Hanrahan on the Polaris system. So enthusiastic was Gray about the paper, he wrote the original Technical Perspective that would ultimately accompany it. This issue presents both.
================= Info from Wiki ================
Jim Gray (computer scientist)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
James Nicholas "Jim" Gray
Born: 1944
Nationality: American
Fields: Computer Science
Institutions: IBM, Tandem Computers, DEC, Microsoft
Alma mater: University of California, Berkeley
Notable awards: Turing Award
James Nicholas "Jim" Gray (born 1944, lost at sea January 28, 2007) was an American computer scientist who received the Turing Award in 1998 "for seminal contributions to database and transaction processing research and technical leadership in system implementation."
Biography
Gray studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned his B.S. in Engineering Mathematics (Math and Statistics) in 1966 and his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1969. He was the first recipient of a Ph.D. from Berkeley's Computer Science Department.
Gray pursued his career primarily working as a researcher and software designer at a number of industrial companies, including IBM, Tandem Computers, and DEC. He was a Technical Fellow for Microsoft Research in San Francisco, beginning in 1995.
Work
Gray contributed to several major database and transaction processing systems, including the System R while at IBM, TerraServer-USA and Skyserver for Microsoft. Among his best known achievements are granular database locking, two-tier transaction commit semantics, and the data cube operator for data warehousing applications. He also helped in the development of Virtual Earth.
Disappearance at sea and search
During a short solo sailing trip to the Farallon Islands near San Francisco to scatter his mother's ashes, his 40-foot yacht, Tenacious, was reported missing on Sunday, January 28, 2007. The Coast Guard searched for four days using a C-130 plane, helicopters, and patrol boats but found no sign of the vessel.
However, Gray's boat was equipped with an automatically deployable EPIRB (Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon), which should have deployed and begun transmitting the instant his vessel sank. The area around the Farallon Islands where Gray was sailing is also well north of the East-West ship channel used by freighters entering and leaving San Francisco Bay. The weather was clear that day and no ships reported striking his boat, nor were any distress radio transmissions reported.
On February 1, 2007, the DigitalGlobe satellite did a scan of the area, generating thousands of images.[9] The images were posted to Amazon Mechanical Turk in order to distribute the work of searching through them, in hopes of spotting his boat.
On February 16, 2007, the Friends of Jim Gray Group suspended their search, but continue to follow any important leads. The family ended its search May 31, 2007. The massive high-tech effort did not reveal any new clues.
The University of California, Berkeley hosted a tribute to Gray and his life on May 31, 2008. The conference included sessions delivered by Richard Rashid and David Vaskevitch. Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope software is dedicated to Gray. In 2008, Microsoft announced the opening of a research center in Madison, Wisconsin, to be named after Jim Gray.
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