On January 28, 2007, Microsoft researcher and world-renowned
computer scientist Jim Gray disappeared while sailing off the
coast of San Francisco. Gray's mother, Ann, had died the
previous October, and he set out to spread her ashes on the
Farallon Islands. While the weather that day was rather calm,
Gray and his boat went astray sometime after midday. In the end,
he was never found, but his disappearance reflected the
tremendous impact he had on modern technology. Last week, Wired
published an article written by Steve Silberman detailing not
just Jim Gray's amazing life, but also the way that the
technology community came together to search for the researcher.
Some of the most influential people in computing were involved
in the search, ranging from Microsoft's Bill Gates to Oracle's
Larry Ellison to engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.
"Jim's work inspired us and many other computer scientists to
seek out and tackle very ambitious projects," said Google's
Sergey Brin. Referring to his work with Google