Communications of the ACM
Stonebraker Receives 2014 ACM A.m. Turing Award
Michael Stonebraker, newly named recipient of the 2014 ACM A.M. Turing Award.
Credit: ACM
ACM has named Michael Stonebraker of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recipient of the 2014 ACM A.M. Turing Award for fundamental contributions to the concepts and practices underlying modern database systems.
Stonebraker has made fundamental contributions to database systems, which are one of the critical applications of computers today and contain much of the world's important data.
He is the inventor of many concepts that were crucial to making databases a reality and that are used in almost all modern database systems. His work on Ingres introduced the notion of query modification, used for integrity constraints and views. His later work on Postgres introduced the object-relational model, effectively merging databases with abstract data types while keeping the database separate from the programming language. Stonebraker's implementations of Ingres and Postgres demonstrated how to engineer database systems that support these concepts; he released these systems as open software, which allowed their widespread adoption and their code bases have been incorporated into many modern database systems.
Since the pathbreaking work on Ingres and Postgres, Stonebraker has continued to be a thought leader in the database community and has had a number of other influential ideas including implementation techniques for column stores and scientific databases and for supporting on-line transaction processing and stream processing.
Background
Stonebraker is adjunct professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL), where he is also co-founder and co-director of the Intel Science and Technology Center for Big Data. Prior to MIT, Stonebraker was professor of computer science at the University of California at Berkeley for 29 years. A graduate of Princeton University, Stonebraker earned his master's degree and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
Stonebraker received the Software System award with Gerald Held and Eugene Wong for the development of Ingres (IBM’s System R was also recognized). He was the recipient of the inaugural SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award, and received the IEEE John von Neumann Medal. Stonebraker is an ACM Fellow and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.
ACM will present the 2014 A.M. Turing Award at its annual Awards Banquet on June 20 in San Francisco, California.
Read ACM's News Release on the 2014 Turing Award.
About the ACM A.M. Turing Award
The ACM A.M. Turing Award was named for Alan M. Turing, the British mathematician who articulated the mathematical foundation and limits of computing, and who was a key contributor to the Allied cryptanalysis of the German Enigma cipher and the German "Tunny" encoding machine in World War II. Since its inception in 1966, the Turing Award has honored the computer scientists and engineers who created the systems and underlying theoretical foundations that have propelled the information technology industry.
About ACM
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is the world's largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field's challenges. ACM strengthens the computing profession's collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.
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