Héctor García-Molina (15 November 1954-25 November 2019) was a Mexican-American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

and Professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. He was advisor to

Sergey Brin Sergey Mikhailovich Brin (russian: link=no, Сергей Михайлович Брин; born August 21, 1973) is an American business magnate, computer scientist, and internet entrepreneur, who co-founded Google with Larry Page. Brin was th ...

, the founder of

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

, from 1993 to 1997 when he was a computer science student at Stanford.

Biography

Born in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico, García-Molina graduated in 1974 with a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Studies (ITESM) and received both a master's degree in Electrical Engineering (1975) and a doctorate in Computer Science (1979) from

. From 1979 to 1991, García-Molina worked as a professor of the Computer Science Department at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

. In 1992 he joined the faculty of

as the Leonard Bosack and Sandra Lerner Professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering and has served as Director of the Computer Systems Laboratory (August 1994 – December 1997) and as chairman of the Computer Science Department from (January 2001 – December 2004). During 1994–1998, he was the Principal Investigator for the Stanford Digital Library Project, the project from which the

search engine emerged. García-Molina has served at the

U.S. President The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States ...

's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) from 1997 to 2001 and has been a member of

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...

's Board of Directors since October 2001. García-Molina was also a Fellow member 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 member ...

, the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

and a member of the

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

. He was a Venture Advisor for Diamondhead Ventures and ONSET Ventures. In 1999 he was laureated with the ACM

SIGMOD SIGMOD is the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Management of Data, which specializes in large-scale data management problems and databases. The annual ACM SIGMOD Conference, which began in 1975, is considered one of ...

Innovations Award. García-Molina died of cancer on the eve of his 66th birthday.

Awards

* (2010) VLDB 10-year Best Paper Award for the paper entitled "The Evolution of the Web and Implications for an Incremental Crawler" in VLDB 2000. * (2009) SIGMOD Best Demo Award for the demo entitled "CourseRank: A Social System for Course Planning". * (2007) ICDE Influential Paper Award for the paper entitled "Disk Striping" in ICDE 1986. Citation: This early paper on disk striping significantly influenced subsequent work on

RAID Raid, RAID or Raids may refer to: Attack * Raid (military), a sudden attack behind the enemy's lines without the intention of holding ground * Corporate raid, a type of hostile takeover in business * Panty raid, a prankish raid by male college ...

storage. * (2007) Honorary doctorate from ETH Zurich. Citation: For his outstanding work in computer science.

References

External links

Héctor García-Molina's Personal Web page at Stanford University
(in Spanish)
→ On the Origins of GoogleVideolecture on Web Information Management: Past, Present and Future"Excelling Beyond the Spreadsheet" Presentation at the 2008 Yahoo! Research Big Thinkers Series
{{DEFAULTSORT:Garcia-Molina, Hector 1954 births 2019 deaths People from Monterrey Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education alumni Stanford University School of Engineering alumni Mexican computer scientists Mexican emigrants to the United States American computer scientists Stanford University Department of Electrical Engineering faculty Stanford University School of Engineering faculty Princeton University faculty Oracle employees Database researchers Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Google people