Eric Allen Brewer is

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". In some c ...

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

and vice-president of infrastructure at

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

. His research interests include

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s and

distributed computing Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems, defined as computer systems whose inter-communicating components are located on different networked computers. The components of a distributed system commu ...

. He is known for formulating the

CAP theorem In database theory, the CAP theorem, also named Brewer's theorem after computer scientist Eric Brewer (scientist), Eric Brewer, states that any distributed data store can provide at most Inconsistent triad, two of the following three guarantees: ; ...

about distributed network applications in the late 1990s. In 1996, Brewer co-founded Inktomi Corporation (bought by

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

in 2003) and became a paper

billionaire A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least 1,000,000,000, one billion units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. It is a sub-category of the concept of the ultr ...

during the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (or dot-com boom) was a stock market bubble that ballooned during the late-1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Interne ...

. Working with the United States federal government during the

presidency of Bill Clinton Bill Clinton's tenure as the 42nd president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1993, and ended on January 20, 2001. Clinton, a Democrat from Arkansas, took office following his victory over Republican in ...

, he helped to create

USA.gov USA.gov is the official web portal of the United States. It is designed to improve the public's interaction with the United States government by quickly directing website visitors to the services or information they are seeking, and by invitin ...

, which launched in 2000. His research also included a

wireless networking A wireless network is a computer network that uses wireless data connections between network nodes. Wireless networking allows homes, telecommunications networks, and business installations to avoid the costly process of introducing cables in ...

scheme called WiLDNet, which promises to bring low-cost connectivity to rural areas of the

developing world A developing country is a sovereign state with a less-developed industrial base and a lower Human Development Index (HDI) relative to developed countries. However, this definition is not universally agreed upon. There is also no clear agreeme ...

. He has worked at Google since 2011.

Education

Brewer received a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

and

(EECS) from

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...

where he was a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity.Membership Directory, 2010, Pi Lambda Phi Inc. Later he earned a

Master of Science A Master of Science (; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree. In contrast to the Master of Arts degree, the Master of Science degree is typically granted for studies in sciences, engineering and medici ...

and

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in EECS from

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

. He received tenure from UC Berkeley in 2000.

Awards

In 1999, he was named to the MIT

Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "''The''" in its name on April 23, 1998, under then pu ...

TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35. In 2007, Brewer was inducted as a

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

"for the design of scalable, reliable internet services." That same year, he was also inducted into the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...

"for the design of highly scalable internet services." Brewer is the 2009 recipient of the ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences "for his contributions to the design and development of highly scalable Internet services." In 2009, Brewer received the SIGOPS Mark Weiser Award. In 2013, the

ETH Zurich ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...

honored him with the title Dr. sc. tech. ().

References

External links

UC Berkeley websiteMore about the CAP Theorem
*Interview wit
Eric Brewer
on winning the ACM Infosys Foundation Award by Stephen Ibaraki * * Docker conference 201
Dockercon14 keynotePodcast interview
with Eric Brewer on the CAP theorem
Inktomi's Wild Ride - A Personal View of the Internet Bubble
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brewer, Eric 2007 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery MIT School of Engineering alumni UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni Living people Google employees Year of birth missing (living people) UC Berkeley College of Engineering faculty Recipients of the ACM Prize in Computing Researchers in distributed computing Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Berkeley Macintosh Users Group members Former billionaires