we were still talking at 3 a.m. my time or 7 a.m. his time. We spent a lot of time together, chasing bugs and arguing over code.

Jim had an uncanny ability to go for the jugular, recognizing the critical issue or bottleneck. I had the privilege of meeting some of the top physicists of the 20th century, including Richard Feynman and Yakov Zeldovich. Jim’s mind worked the same way as theirs; like them, he could solve a problem on the back of an envelope.

He was also very good at getting results published. When he felt the time was right for us to write a paper, he would start with a quick draft, helping his collaborators (like me) with writer’s block get up to speed. He was very generous, often doing much more than his collaborators, yet still insisted on others, particularly young researchers, take the role of lead author. He mentored many students, always patient and encouraging, trying to get them excited and lead by example.

He never gave up hands-on work. If he did not have time to write code or tinker with databases, it was not a good day for him. He had an inexhaustible source of energy; when everyone else was falling over, he kept going, pulling everyone along with him. Starting at 7 a.m. one day at BARC we kept going at a spurious SQL bug and never stood up (except for coffee) until 11 p.m. (when we finally found it). By then, most restaurants were closed, but Jim led the way through San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood until we found an inviting Italian restaurant and had a proper dinner.

 

figure 6: the world of science according to Jim Gray.

Work

Time

Travel

meetings

Dinners

He once took a piece of paper and drew a rectangle for me, with two diagonals splitting it into four pieces, then said: “This is our life” with the vertical axis representing the arrow of time (see Figure 6) and asked: “Alex, where are we on this diagram?” He did all he could to ensure the work part occupied as big a piece as possible.

Jim and I met rather late in our careers, a point in life when most people might perhaps be expected to establish good working relationships, but deep friendships generally come much earlier. For whatever reason, we connected, became close friends and had amazing conversations where the bandwidth regularly went way beyond the spoken word.

Jim’s love of life and work inspired anyone fortunate enough to spend time with him. My friendship and collaboration took my career in new, entirely unexpected directions, away from astrophysics and into e-science. He affected the lives of many others in the same way. All of us privileged enough to call Jim a friend will forever be trying to turn at least some of the projects we dreamed of together into reality.

acknowledgments

I thank Jim Gray for many years of advice, support, and friendship and Donna Carnes for being the strongest of all, holding us together when everything was falling apart.

 

References

1. balazinska, m., deshpande, a., franklin, m. J., Gibbons, p.b., Gray, J., hansen, m., liebhold, m., nath, s., szalay, a., and tao, v. data management in the worldwide sensor Web. IEEE Pervasive Computing (2007), 30.

2. bell, G., Gray, J., and szalay, a.s. petascale computational systems. IEEE Computer (Jan. 2006), 39.

3. budavári, t., malik, t., szalay, a.s., thakar, a., and Gray, J. skyQuery: a prototype distributed query Web service for the virtual observatory. in Proceedings of the ADASS XII, ASP Conference Series, h. payne, r.i. Jedrzejewski, and r.n. hook, eds. (baltimore, md, oct. 2002). astronomical society of the pacific, san francisco, 2003, 31.

4. fekete, G., szalay, a.s., and Gray, J. htm2: spatial toolkit for the virtual observatory. in Proceedings of the ADASS, ASP Conference Series (strasbourg, france, oct. 2003). astronomical society of the pacific, san francisco, 2003, 289.

5. Gray, J., nieto-santisteban, m.a., and szalay, a.s. The Zones Algorithm for Finding Points-Near-a-Point or Cross-Matching Spatial Datasets, MSR-TR-2006-52. microsoft technical report, redmond, Wa, 2006.

6. Gray, J., szalay, a., budavári, t., thakar, a.r., nieto-santisteban, m.a., and lupton, r. Cross-Matching Multiple Spatial Observations and Dealing with Missing Data, Microsoft Technical Report, MSR- TR-2006-175. microsoft technical report, redmond, Wa, 2006.

7. Gray, J., liu, d.t., nieto-santisteban, m.a., szalay, a.s., heber, G., and de Witt, d. Scientific Data Management in the Coming Decade, MSR-TR-2005-10. microsoft technical report, redmond, Wa, 2005.

8. Gray, J., szalay, a.s., and fekete, G. Using Table Valued

Functions in SQL Server 2005 to Implement a Spatial Data Library, MSR- TR-2005-122. microsoft technical report, redmond, Wa, 2005.

9. Gray, J., szalay, a.s., fekete, G., o’mullane, W., thakar, a.r., heber, G., and rots, a.h. There Goes the Neighborhood: Relational Algebra for Spatial Data Search, MSR- TR-2004-32. microsoft technical report, redmond, Wa, 2004

10. Gray, J. and szalay, a.s. Where the rubber meets the sky: bridging the gap between databases and science. IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin (dec. 2004), 4.

11. Gray, J., Chong, W., barclay, t., szalay, a.s., and vandenberg, J. TeraScale SneakerNet: Using Inexpensive Disks for Backup, Archiving, and Data Exchange, MS- TR-2002-54. microsoft technical report, redmond, Wa, 2002.

12. nieto-santisteban, m.a., thakar, a.r., szalay, a.s., and Gray, J. large-scale query and xmatch, entering the parallel zone. in Proceedings of the Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XV ASP Conference Series, C. Gabriel, C. arviset, d. ponz, and e. solano, eds. (el escoreal, spain, oct. 2005). astronomical society of the pacific, san francisco, 2006, 493.

13. o’mullane, W., Gray, J., li, n., budavari, t., nieto santisteban, m., and szalay, a.s. batch query system with interactive local storage for sdss and the vo. in Proceedings so the ADASS XIII, f. ochsenbein, m. allen, and d. egret, eds. (strasbourg, france, oct. 2003). astronomical society of the pacific, san francisco, 2004, 372.

14. ozer, s., szalay, a.s., szlavecz, K., terzis, t., musâoiu-e., r., and Cogan, J. Using Data-Cubes in Science: An Example from Environmental Monitoring of the Soil Ecosystem, MSR-TR-2006-134. microsoft technical report, redmond, Wa, 2006.

15. singh, v., Gray, J., thakar, a.r., szalay, a.s., raddick, J., boroski, b., lebedeva, s., and yanny, b. skyserver traffic report: The First Five Years, MSR- TR-2006-190. microsoft technical report, redmond, Wa, 2006.

16. szalay, a.s. and Gray, J. science in an exponential world. Nature 413 (2006), 440–441.

17. szalay, a.s., Gray, J., fekete, G., Kunszt, p., Kukol, p., and thakar, a. Indexing the Sphere with the Hierarchical Triangular Mesh, MSR-TR-2005-123. microsoft technical report, redmond, Wa, 2005.

18. szalay, a.s., budavári, t., Connolly, a.J., Gray, J., matsubara, t., pope, a. and szapudi, i. spatial clustering of galaxies in large data sets. in Proceedings of the SPIE Conference on Advanced Telescope Technologies ( Waikaloa, hi, July). the international society for optical engineering, 2002, 1–12.

19. szalay, a.s., budavári, t., malik, t. Gray, J., and thakar, a. Web services for the virtual observatory. in Proceedings of the SPIE Conference on Advanced Telescope Technologies (Waikaloa, hi, July). the international society for optical engineering, 2002, 124.

20. szalay, a.s., Gray, J., and vandenberg, J. petabyte-scale data mining: dream or reality? in Proceedings of the SPIE Conference on Advanced Telescope Technologies (Waikaloa, hi, July). the international society of optical engineering, 2002, 333–338.

21. szalay, a.s. and Gray, J. the World-Wide telescope. Science 293 (2001), 2037–2040.

22. szalay, a.s., Kunszt, p., thakar, a., Gray, J., slutz, d., and brunner, r. designing and mining multi-terabyte astronomy archives: the sloan digital sky survey. in Proceedings of the SIGMOD 2000 Conference (madison, Wi). aCm press, new york, 2000, 451–462.

23. szlavecz, K., terzis, a., musâoiu-e., r., Cogan, J., small, s., ozer, s., burns, r., Gray, J., and szalay, a.s. Life Under Your Feet: An End-to-End Soil Ecology Sensor Network, Database, Web Server, and Analysis Service, MSR-TR-2006-90. microsoft technical report, redmond, Wa, 2006.

24. thakar, a., szalay, a., Kunszt, p., and Gray, J. migrating a multiterabyte archive from object to relational database. Computing in Science and Engineering 5 (sept./oct. 2003), 16.

 

Alexander S. Szalay ( [e-mail]) is alumni Centennial professor in the department of physics and astronomy at the Johns hopkins university, baltimore, md.

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