James (Jim) Nicholas Gray

Pioneer of granular database locking, two-tier transaction commit semantics, and the data cube operator for data warehousing applications, Gray transformed the field of database and transaction processing systems.

Gray studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned his B.S. in Engineering Mathematics (Math and Statistics) in 1966 and his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1969. He was the first recipient of a Ph.D. from Berkeley's Computer Science Department.

Gray pursued his career primarily working as a researcher and software designer at a number of industrial companies, including IBM, Tandem Computers, and DEC. He served as a Technical Fellow for Microsoft Research in San Francisco from 1995.

Gray contributed to several major database and transaction processing systems, including System R while at IBM, TerraServer-USA and Skyserver for Microsoft. Among his best known achievements were granular database locking, two-tier transaction commit semantics, and the data cube operator for data warehousing applications. He also helped in the development of Virtual Earth.