Tech Hero Lost at Sea
Last year, I became so interested in how Microsoft researchers worked with
scientists that I wrote not one, but two cover stories. One Microsoft researcher's
name came up again and again: Jim Gray, founder of Microsoft's Bay Area
Research Center. My new friends from Visual Studio magazine, which we took over
in December, know Jim well, as he spoke at their popular VSLive! events.
Unfortunately, as I write, Jim is lost at sea, having left on Sunday to spread
his mother's ashes off the coast of San Francisco. The good news is he
may just be found safe and sound.
Gray has a resume that makes all of us look a little dim. An expert in multiprocessing,
transaction processing, databases and data mining, Gray has used these skills
to help build commercial products such as ATMs and SQL Server 2005, and humanitarian
endeavors like trying to cure cancer and understand the heavens and the earth.
Pretty amazing work.
The San Francisco Chronicle has a terrific profile of Gray here.
Gray’s home page is here.
And my two stories are here: "Can
Microsoft Save the World?" and "The
Science of Software."
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/31/2007 at 1:15 PM