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For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul



Thursday, February 01, 2007

Search for lost computer scientist nears end

This is absolutely tragic. Jim Gray was one of the good guys, no doubt about it:
The Coast Guard planned to call off its search early Thursday for an acclaimed computer scientist whose sailboat has disappeared off Northern California.

Despite unusually calm weather, searchers have exhausted any area Jim Gray could have drifted or sailed after leaving for a solo sailing trip Sunday to scatter his mother's ashes at sea, a Coast Guard spokesman said.

"If they were to even find a life raft, they would have located him in their search patterns," said Petty Officer 3rd Class Jonathan Cilley.

Gray, founder and manager of Microsoft's Bay Area Research Center in San Francisco, won the A.M. Turing Award -- the "Nobel Prize of computer science" -- in 1998 for research that paved the way for automatic teller machines, computerized airline reservations and online shopping.
I first met Gray at a 1998 SQL Server event, which I wrote about on the SuperSite for Windows. Absolutely inspirational guy and a key player in turning SQL Server into something truly powerful.

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