A Legend Goes Missing
Microsoft research fellow Jim Gray has been a major player in the area of database
development and transaction processing. A Turing Award winner who helped create
many of the foundation technologies at the heart of modern database and transaction
processing systems, Gray founded and managed the Microsoft Bay Area Research
Center.
Now it appears that Jim Gray, 63, may have been lost at sea during a solo day
trip he took from a San Francisco marina on Sunday morning.
Gray was last heard from at 10:30 a.m. Sunday, when he made a cell phone call
from his 40-foot yacht "Tenacious" to tell a family member that he
was passing out of service range. Gray's wife reported him missing at 8:30 p.m.
Sunday evening, after Gray failed to return from his trip.
California Coast Guard units have been searching the area off the Farallon
Islands, 27 miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge, without success.
Gray joined Microsoft in 1995 and holds a Ph.D. degree in computer science
from the University of California, Berkeley. An expert in the area of database
and transaction processing systems, Gray worked at Digital, Tandem, IBM and
AT&T before joining Microsoft. You can learn more about Jim
Gray, his fields of research and interests here.
Jim Gray's efforts recently earned coverage in Redmond Developer News. The
December cover story, "The
Science of Software," explores some of the exciting research that has
come out of Gray's group in Microsoft.
Posted by Michael Desmond on 01/31/2007