Gerald John "Jerry" Popek (September 22, 1946 – July 20, 2008) was an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

, known for his research on

operating systems 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 ...

and

virtualization In computing, virtualization (abbreviated v12n) is a series of technologies that allows dividing of physical computing resources into a series of virtual machines, operating systems, processes or containers. Virtualization began in the 1960s wit ...

. With Robert P. Goldberg he proposed the

Popek and Goldberg virtualization requirements The Popek and Goldberg virtualization requirements are a set of conditions sufficient for a computer architecture to support system virtualization efficiently. They were introduced by Gerald J. Popek and Robert P. Goldberg in their 1974 article " ...

, a set of conditions necessary for a computer architecture to support system virtualization.

Early life and education

Born on September 22, 1946, in

Passaic, New Jersey Passaic ( or ) is a City (New Jersey), city in Passaic County, New Jersey, Passaic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States census, the city was List of municipalities in New Jersey, the state's 16th-most-populous ...

, Popek graduated from Rutherford High School in Rutherford, New Jersey in 1964, where he was the class valedictorian. He graduated from

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

in 1968 with a B.S. in Nuclear Engineering. In 1970, he completed an M.S. in Applied Mathematics from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

. In 1973, he completed a Ph.D, also in Applied Mathematics, at Harvard and moved to

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

. At UCLA, he worked on virtualisation, network security, reliable operating systems and Databases. He became Director of the Center for Experimental Computer Science.

Academic career

Around 1980, he worked on the LOCUS distributed operating system, an early implementation of the single-system image idea. Between April 1981 and June 1983, Popek served on the

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adva ...

"steering committee" for

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...

UNIX Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

formed by Duane Adams of DARPA to guide the design work leading to 4.2BSD. Other members of the committee were Bob Fabry,

Bill Joy William Nelson Joy (born November 8, 1954) is an American computer engineer and venture capitalist. He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Scott McNealy, Vinod Khosla, and Andy Bechtolsheim, and served as Chief Scientist and CTO ...

and Sam Leffler from UCB, Alan Nemeth and Rob Gurwitz from BBN,

Dennis Ritchie Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941 – October 12, 2011) was an American computer scientist. He created the C programming language and the Unix operating system and B language with long-time colleague Ken Thompson. Ritchie and Thomp ...

from

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...

, Keith Lantz from Stanford, Rick Rashid from Carnegie-Mellon, Bert Halstead 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 ...

and Dan Lynch from ISI.

Business career

In order to pursue the commercial opportunities of LOCUS he formed the

Locus Computing Corporation Locus Computing Corporation was formed in 1982 by Gerald J. Popek, Charles S. Kline and Gregory I. Thiel to commercialize the technologies developed for the LOCUS (operating system), LOCUS distributed computing, distributed operating system at UCL ...

in 1982, taking on the roles of Chief technical officer and Chairman. In 1995, Locus was acquired by Platinum Technology Inc. in a share swap. Popek took on the role of CTO of Platinum. In 1999, he left Platinum to become CTO of CarsDirect.com, "the first Internet car company" In 2000, he left CarsDirect.com to join NetZero also as CTO In 2001, NetZero merged with its competitor Juno to form United Online Inc. and Dr Popek became Executive Vice President and CTO of the new company.

Awards

In June 2009, he was posthumously awarded the 2009

USENIX USENIX is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization based in Berkeley, California and founded in 1975 that supports advanced computing systems, operating system (OS), and computer networking research. It organizes several confe ...

Lifetime Achievement Award.

References

External links

In Memoriam: Gerald J. Popek
{{DEFAULTSORT:Popek, Gerald J. American computer businesspeople American computer scientists Polytechnic Institute of New York University alumni Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences alumni University of California, Los Angeles faculty 1947 births 2008 deaths American chief technology officers People from Passaic, New Jersey Rutherford High School (New Jersey) alumni People from Rutherford, New Jersey