Gerald John "Jerry" Popek (September 22, 1946 – July 20, 2008) was an American computer scientist, known for his research on operating systems and

virtualization In computing, virtualization or virtualisation (sometimes abbreviated v12n, a numeronym) is the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something at the same abstraction level, including virtual computer hardware platforms, stor ...

. 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 "F ...

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

Academia

Born in Passaic, New Jersey Popek graduated from Rutherford High School in

Rutherford, New Jersey Rutherford is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2020 United States Census, the borough's population was 18,834. Rutherford was formed as a borough by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on September 21, 1881, fr ...

in 1964, where he was the class valedictorian. He graduated from

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

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 Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

. 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. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...

. At UCLA he worked on virtualisation, network security, reliable operating systems and Databases. He became Director of the Center for Experimental Computer Science. Around 1980 he worked on the

LOCUS Locus (plural loci) is Latin for "place". It may refer to: Entertainment * Locus (comics), a Marvel Comics mutant villainess, a member of the Mutant Liberation Front * ''Locus'' (magazine), science fiction and fantasy magazine ** ''Locus Award' ...

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 Ad ...

"steering committee" for BSD

UNIX Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser 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, an ...

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 at ...

and

Sam Leffler Samuel J Leffler is a computer scientist, known for his extensive work on BSD, from the 1980s to FreeBSD in the present day. Among other projects, he created FlexFAX, LibTIFF, and the FreeBSD Wireless Device Drivers. The ''Design and Impl ...

from UCB, Alan Nemeth and Rob Gurwitz from BBN, Dennis Ritchie from

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial Research and development, research and scientific developm ...

, Keith Lantz from Stanford, Rick Rashid from

Carnegie-Mellon Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

, Bert Halstead from

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

and Dan Lynch from ISI.

Commercial

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 distributed operating system at UCLA. Locus was notable for commercializing si ...

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. Dr 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 NetZero is an Internet service provider based in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California. It is a subsidiary of United Online, which in turn is a subsidiary of investment bank B. Riley Financial. United Online is also the parent of Juno Online ...

also as CTO In 2001 NetZero merged with its competitor Juno to form

United Online United Online, Inc. was an independent public company formed by the 2001 merger of NetZero and Juno Online Services. It is currently a subsidiary of investment bank B. Riley Financial. The company's range of products and services has evolved si ...

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 Lifetime Achievement Award.

References

External links

In Memoriam: Gerald J. Popek
American computer businesspeople American computer scientists Polytechnic Institute of New York University alumni Harvard 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 People from Rutherford, New Jersey Rutherford High School (New Jersey) alumni {{US-academic-bio-stub