Dedication to Jim Gray

by David DeWitt

The SciDB project is dedicated to Jim Gray, who was lost at sea off the northern California coast while sailing on January 28, 2007. Jim was one of world's most distinguished computer scientists. His numerous contributions to the field of database systems were recognized with memberships in the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the European Academy of Science. He was also a fellow of both the ACM and IEEE. In 1999 Jim was awarded the ACM A.M. Turing Award for his seminal contributions to our understanding of the concept of transactions and their implementation.

Over the course of his career Jim made numerous technical contributions beyond his work on transactions. These include database system architectures and algorithms, fault tolerance, input/output architectures, parallel database systems, database system performance evaluation and benchmarking, multidimensional data analysis, and eScience, including the Microsoft TerraServer and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey projects. At the May 2008 tribute to him, speaker after speaker related how Jim contributed to their own research programs through his outreach efforts.

Jim's contributions to eScience inspired us to initiate the SciDB project after his disappearance. We hope that our efforts on this project will achieve the standards Jim set for us.