James Nicholas Gray (1944 – declared dead in absentia 2012) was an American computer scientist who received the Turing Award in 1998 "for seminal contributions to database and transaction processing research and technical leadership in system implementation".

The family then moved to Virginia, spending about four years there, until Gray's parents divorced, after which he returned to San Francisco with his mother.

His father, an amateur inventor, patented a design for a ribbon cartridge for typewriters that earned him a substantial royalty stream.

Gray pursued his career primarily working as a researcher and software designer at a number of industrial companies, including IBM, Tandem Computers, and DEC.

On January 28, 2007, he failed to return from a short solo trip to scatter his mother's ashes at the Farallon Islands near San Francisco.

[20] The weather was clear, and no distress call was received, nor was any signal detected from the boat's automatic Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon.

[9][27][28][29][30] Marine search expert Bob Bilger explains that the type of boat used by Gray, a C&C 40 is vulnerable to hull damage, and can sink as quickly as in 30 seconds, also taking any equipment with it, not leaving any loose debris.

Previous award winners include Alex Szalay (2007), Carole Goble (2008), Jeff Dozier (2009), Phil Bourne (2010), Mark Abbott (2011), Antony John Williams (2012), and Dr. David Lipman, M.D.