PATRICK E. O'NEIL

1942 - 2019

O'NEIL, Patrick E. Of Cambridge, on Sept. 20, 2019 at home, at age 77. He was a professor of CS at UMass Boston, retired in 2011. He earned his BA at MIT in 1963, and his PhD at Rockefeller U. in 1969 ,with Gian-Carlo Rota. After working as an assistant professor at MIT, he left academia for industry, working at IBM, PRIME Computer and CCA. He came to UMass in 1988, with a specialty in databases. While at UMB, he consulted with DEC, Microsoft and others. He authored many papers and four patents. O'Neil did internationally known work on replication in distributed databases, page replacement strategies for databases, SQL isolation, and database indexing strategies, as detailed on his Wikipedia page. O'Neil was known for his gregarious and blunt manner, as well as his contagious sense of humor. He liked to brag that he "took humor very seriously." He was the Chief Fool of his "humor group" and had many fond memories of his fellow fools. He is survived by his wife and UMass colleague, Elizabeth O'Neil, 2 children, and 4 grandchildren. All of them are nerds as well. In lieu of flowers, please donate to the Salvation Army, his favorite charity.

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