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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 January 31, 2007


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