Gray, James Nicholas

James Nicholas Gray, (born Jan. 12, 1944, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.—disappeared Jan. 28, 2007, near San Francisco), American computer scientist and winner of the 1998 A.M. Turing Award, the highest honour in computer science, for his “seminal contributions to database and transaction processing research and technical leadership in system implementation.”

Gray attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a bachelor’s degree (1966) in mathematics and engineering and—following a year off to work at Bell Laboratories (1966–67)—the school’s first doctorate in computer science (1969). He remained at Berkeley for an IBM postdoctoral fellowship (1969–71) before working at various IBM research facilities from 1971 to 1980. Gray next worked as a software designer for Tandem Computers (1980–90), as a corporate consulting engineer for Digital Equipment Corporation (1990–94), and as a researcher for Microsoft Corporation (1995–2007).

In addition to his fundamental research in database technologies, Gray helped develop Microsoft TerraServer, a free searchable database of satellite images of the Earth’s surface, which went online in 1998, many years before the comparable Google Earth was launched. Beginning in 2002 Gray was also instrumental in developing SkySearch—released to the public in 2008 as the Microsoft Worldwide Telescope—which combines astronomical images from various sources into a free searchable and viewable application.

On Jan. 28, 2007, Gray set sail alone from the San Francisco Bay in his 40-foot yacht to spread his mother’s ashes at sea. The weather was calm and he was an experienced sailor, but, when he failed to answer his mobile telephone late in the day, the U.S. Coast Guard was notified. Although the government gave up its search for him and the boat after a few days, computer scientists from around the world, regardless of their academic or corporate affiliation, continued to collaborate for months afterward on devising programs and devoting time to analyze satellite data for any evidence of his whereabouts—using tools such as TerraServer. The disappearance of Gray and his boat remained a mystery, however.

Gray was the author, with Andreas Reuter, of Transaction Processing: Concepts and Techniques (1993). He was elected to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE; 1982), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM; 1994), the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (1997), the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (2001), the American Academy of Arts And Sciences (2001), and the European Academy of Science (2003). In addition to ACM’s Turing Award, Gray received the 1998 IEEE Charles Babbage Award.