Jim Gray has been a very respected name not only in databases but in whole computer science. In addition to his technical competence, he has always been a very enthusiastic researcher eager to address challenging problem and a very friendly person. No wonder people are so concerned and are making every effort to locate him. He went on his sail boat last Sunday to spread ashes of his mother in ocean and has not been located since then.
NYT has a very detailed and touching story detailing search for Jim Gray using all modern technology.Â
The flurry of activity, which began in earnest on Tuesday, escalated as the days and nights passed. A veritable Who’s Who of computer scientists from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, NASA and universities across the country spent sleepless nights writing ad hoc software, creating a blog and reconfiguring satellite images so that dozens of volunteers could pore over them, searching for a speck of red hull and white deck among a sea of gray pixels.
Coast Guard officials said they had never before seen such a concerted, technically creative effort carried out by friends and family of a missing sailor. “This is the largest strictly civilian, privately sponsored search effort I have ever seen,� said Capt. David Swatland, deputy commander of the Coast Guard sector in San Francisco, who has spent most of his 23-year career in search and rescue.
Lets just hope that something strange, but not bad, happened and Jim will come back safe to make his family and friends happy and to help advance computer science and its applications further.