IV · Data & databases
Michael Stonebraker
1943–
MIT · creator of Ingres, Postgres, Vertica, VoltDB · 2014 Turing laureate
Gave us
Postgres. Ingres before that. Vertica, VoltDB, Tamr after. The argument that "one size doesn't fit all" in database design.
The story
A career of starting database companies, selling them, and starting the next one. The Postgres lineage powers every modern relational + extension story (CockroachDB, Citus, TimescaleDB).