Lew Tucker

Last updated
Lew Tucker
Lew Tucker (2315010875).jpg
Born (1950-04-24) April 24, 1950 (age 74)
Education Cornell University (BS, 1972)
Polytechnic Institute of New York
(MS and Ph.D., 1984)
Known for Open source, Artificial intelligence, Parallel computing
Title
Parent

Lewis Wiley Tucker (born April 24, 1950) is an American computer scientist, open source advocate, and industry executive spanning several decades of technology innovation. [1] As an early proponent of internet technologies, he held executive-level positions at Sun Microsystems, Salesforce.com, and Cisco Systems contributing to the advancement of the Java programming language and platform, the AppExchange on-demand application marketplace, and the OpenStack cloud computing platform.

Contents

Early life and education

The son of big band Leader Tommy Tucker, [2] he grew up in the West Allenhurst section of Ocean Township, Monmouth County, New Jersey and attended the Peddie School in Hightstown, New Jersey for high school. [3] He graduated from Cornell University with a B.A. in Biology and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Polytechnic Institute of New York.

Career

Having interests in neurobiology and computer science, in 1976 Tucker started as a laboratory technician at the Laboratory of Neurobiology at Cornell University Medical College. He later become an assistant research scientist bringing computing to medical imaging and contributing to several research papers on neurogenic control of hypertension. [4] [5] He completed a Masters and Ph.D. in computer science from Polytechnic Institute of New York in 1984. His dissertation spanned both computer vision and parallel machine architectures for biomedical image analysis. [6]

Upon completing his Ph.D., Tucker joined a new startup, Thinking Machines, in Cambridge, MA. Thinking Machines was founded by Daniel Hillis to develop technology for artificial intelligence using parallel computing. As research director for computer vision, Tucker contributed to the software [7] and architecture of the Connection Machine, an early commercial massively parallel machine containing over 65,000 processors that was used by national laboratories working on supercomputing grand challenges.

In 1994 Thinking Machines was acquired by Sun Microsystems. Tucker joined Sun to lead an engineering team brought in from Thinking Machines in Chelmsford, MA. A year later, he moved to California as part of an initial team of developers and executives behind Java, a new programming language and platform designed for the emerging web. Tucker became Director of ISV Relations, evangelizing the use of Java technology by large corporations and startups alike. [8] He was a frequent speaker on how the growing internet would become a force in the industry and was featured alongside other internet pioneers in "Digerati: encounters with the cyber elite". [9] In 2000, at Sun Microsystems, Tucker became VP of Internet Services responsible for www.sun.com and java.sun.com.

In 2004, Tucker left Sun to join Salesforce.com where he created the AppExchange, one of the first online marketplaces for software-as-a-service applications. He left Salesforce.com to join Radar Networks, [10] to advance a new semantic web platform, Twine.com, based on RDF.

With the emergence of Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) cloud platform, Tucker returned to Sun Microsystems in 2008 as Vice President and CTO to develop Sun’s platform for cloud computing. [11] [12] Just prior to launching Sun Cloud, the company was acquired by Oracle in 2010 shutting down the effort.

Tucker left to join Cisco Systems, Inc., as the company’s first VP and Chief Technology Officer for cloud computing. [13] [14] As Cloud CTO, [15] Tucker moved Cisco into becoming a major contributor to the open-source developer community being built around OpenStack. [16] He served as vice-chairman of the OpenStack Foundation, [17] [18] and board member of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, [19] and Cloud Foundry Foundation. [20]

Select articles and presentations

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References

  1. ↑ Smith, Roger (22 January 2009). "Sun Cloud CTO: 'Your Data Center Is Your Computer'". Information Week. Retrieved 31 December 2020.
  2. ↑ Tucker, Tommy (July 13, 1989). "Tommy Tucker Dead; Band Leader Was 86". The New York Times.
  3. ↑ "Local Happenings; Asbury Park Area", Asbury Park Press , February 13, 1968. Accessed January 1, 2023, via Newspapers.com. "Jonathan Vegosen, Deal Park, and Lewis Tucker, West Allenhurst, both Ocean Township, received gold keys for their membership in the honor service organization, the Gold Key, at Peddie School, Hightstown, at Founders Day exercises Sunday."
  4. ↑ Nathan, Marc A.; Tucker, Lewis W.; Severini, W.H.; Reis, Donald J. (1978). "Enhancement of conditioned arterial pressure responses in cats after brainstem lesions". Science. 201 (4350): 71–73. Bibcode:1978Sci...201...71N. doi:10.1126/science.663640. PMID   663640.
  5. ↑ Nakai, Masatsugu; Iadecola, Constantino; Ruggiero, David A.; Tucker, Lewis W.; Reis, Donald J. (1983). "Electrical stimulation of cerebellar fastigial nucleus increases cerebral cortical blood flow without change in local metabolism: evidence for an intrinsic system in brain for primary vasodilation". Brain Research. 260 (1): 35–49. doi:10.1016/0006-8993(83)90762-X. PMID   6824954. S2CID   24933126.
  6. ↑ Tucker, Lewis Wiley (1984). Computer vision using quad tree refinement. Ph.D. Dissertation. Polytechnic University. p. 169. ISBN   9781392464519.
  7. ↑ Tucker, L.W.; Mainwaring, A. (March 31, 1994). "CMMD: Active messages on the CM-5". Parallel Computing. 20 (4): 481–496. doi:10.1016/0167-8191(94)90024-8.
  8. ↑ "Java Developer Connection". Archived from [http:/developer.java.sun.com/developer/index.html the original] on 1999-10-13.{{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
  9. ↑ Brockman, John (1996). Digerati: Encounters with the Cyber Elite. Hardwired. pp. 295–300. ISBN   1888869046.
  10. ↑ Spivack, Nova. "Lew Tucker — Java Pioneer and Creator of Salesforce.com's AppExchange to be CTO of Radar Networks" . Retrieved 31 December 2020.
  11. ↑ Krill, Paul. "Sun challenges Amazon for cloud computing". Infoworld. Retrieved 1 January 2021.
  12. ↑ Creeger, Mache (August 2009). "CTO Roundtable: Cloud Computing". Communications of the ACM. 52 (8): 50–56. doi: 10.1145/1536616.1536633 . S2CID   26273969.
  13. ↑ Malik, Om. "Former Sun Techie Is Now Cisco's Cloud CTO". GigaOM. Retrieved 31 December 2020.
  14. ↑ Lawson, Stephen. "Sun's Lew Tucker to Lead Cisco's Cloud Efforts". CIO. IDG Communications, Inc. Retrieved 30 December 2020.
  15. ↑ Bort, Julie. "The 39 Most Important People in Cloud Computing". Business Insider. Retrieved 30 December 2020.
  16. ↑ Suri, Isha (17 October 2012). "Cisco Announces Free OpenStack Distribution". Siliconangle.com.
  17. ↑ DEUTSCHER, Maria (30 August 2012). "The 7 Hour OpenStack Foundation Meeting: New Leadership Team and Not Much Else". SiliconAngle. Retrieved 31 December 2020.
  18. ↑ Cathey, Robert (January 16, 2015). "OpenStack Community Elects 2015 Foundation Board Members". Business Wire.
  19. ↑ "CNCF Governing Board". Archived from the original on 2018-09-08. Retrieved 31 December 2020.
  20. ↑ "Cloud Foundry Board". Archived from the original on 2018-10-20. Retrieved 31 December 2020.
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