between the Farallones and the area north of the Golden Gate Bridge (Jim’s most likely path home). Each day of the underwater search, I looked for what I dreaded to find: Tenacious lying on the seabed. Initially, I was relieved at the end of each day that we had not found Tenacious. As time passed, however, I realized that we truly might lose our second hope, our hope of finding Tenacious, and our hope of ever knowing what happened to Jim and where it happened. But we lost that hope as well, for even after searching more than 300 square nautical miles of seabed, we did not find a trace of Tenacious.
So we all paused for a while; certainly the family was just exhausted by the end of May. Jim’s absence, the hurly-burly of the publicity surrounding the above-water search, the duration of the underwater search, and the ambiguity of it all took an enormous toll on the family and close friends.
By late September, however, people came together to organize a public tribute to Jim. Jim completed his undergraduate and Ph.D. studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and he often told me: “Berkeley made me, and I owe them a lot.” Because of this, his public tribute is being held at his alma mater. Jim’s friends, colleagues, and family are honoring him with the same intensity they used to search for him. That is what these proceedings are all about: paying tribute to Jim’s work and Jim as an individual. We may never know exactly what happened to him that day at sea, but we do know the person he was and the quality of his mind and work. Within the family, we think of Jim as a beloved family member, as our Jim. We are also proud of his accomplishments as a famous scientist and a Turing Award winner. We understand that while he has filled up much of our worlds, his world is larger than us, even as we understand how important we were to him. But, in fact, in the eyes of his peers, Jim was much more than just a famous Turing Award winner, as the articles within these proceedings show. He was a man with a brilliant mind who connected deeply and productively with many co-workers over many decades. More than anything, he was a strong individual who built close relationships whilst doing his science; for certainly the relationships were key to the collaborative scientific research that he engaged in, research that is described in the articles written for the proceedings of the public tribute ( http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/IPRO/ JimGrayTribute/).
Several articles in the proceedings address Jim’s accomplishments since his days at Berkeley. They are written by individuals, who, to a person, had long and close relationships with Jim. Michael Harrison has known Jim since his undergraduate days and writes of Jim’s accomplishments at Berkeley (“Jim Gray at Berkeley”). Pat Helland, Jim’s friend and peer for more than 25 years, discusses Jim’s role as a friend and peer mentor in his article “Knowledge and Wisdom.” Ed Lazowska, also a friend and peer of Jim’s for more than 25 years, writes about Jim’s academic mentoring in his article “500 Special Relationships: Jim as a Mentor to Faculty and Students.” Mike Stonebraker, Jim’s friend and peer, summarizes Jim’s contributions in the field of computer science in his article: “Why Did Jim Gray Win the Turing Award?” Your karma is good, Mike, and I thank you for all that you have done for Jim and for me.
References:
Archives