Michael Stonebraker

Stonebraker's career can be broadly divided into two phases; his time at Berkeley when he focused on relational systems, and the past decade at MIT where he has developed several new data management systems. In 1973 Stonebraker and his colleague Eugene Wong decided to start researching relational database systems after reading a series of seminal papers published by Edgar F. Codd on the relational data model. After founding Ingres, Stonebraker and Rowe began a "post-Ingres" effort, to address the limitations of the relational model. The new project was named Postgres, and was designed to add support for complex data types to database systems and improve end-to-end performance of data-intensive applications. Postgres was also offered using a BSD-like license, and the code forms the basis of today's free software, PostgreSQL. Stonebraker also led an effort to commercialize the code, creating Illustra which was purchased by Informix. PostgreSQL has been used as the basis for a number of other startup companies, including Aster Data Systems, EnterpriseDB, and Greenplum.