computer science

Héctor García-Molina

Héctor García-Molina is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Héctor García-Molina rather than just read about it. In short: Héctor García-Molina (26 November 1954 – 25 November 2019) was a Mexican computer scientist and Professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He was the advisor to Google co-founder Sergey Brin from 1993 to 1997 when Brin was a computer science student at Stanford.

Key takeaways

Héctor García-Molina belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Héctor García-Molina to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Héctor García-Molina from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Héctor García-Molina (26 November 1954 – 25 November 2019) was a Mexican computer scientist and Professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He was the advisor to Google co-founder Sergey Brin from 1993 to 1997 when Brin was a computer science student at Stanford.

Biography Born in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico, García-Molina graduated in 1974 with a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Studies (ITESM) and received both a master's degree in Electrical Engineering (1975) and a doctorate in Computer Science (1979) from Stanford University. From 1979 to 1991, García-Molina worked as a professor of the Computer Science Department at Princeton University in New Jersey. In 1992 he joined the faculty of Stanford University as the Leonard Bosack and Sandra Lerner Professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering and has served as Director of the Computer Systems Laboratory (August 1994 – December 1997) and as chairman of the Computer Science Department from (January 2001 – December 2004). During 1994–1998, he was Principal Investigator for the Stanford Digital Library Project, the project from which the Google search engine emerged. García-Molina served at the U.S. President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) from 1997 to 2001 and was a member of Oracle Corporation's Board of Directors beginning in October 2001 until his death. García-Molina was also a Fellow member of the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He was a Venture Advisor for Diamondhead Ventures and ONSET Ventures. In 1999 he was laureated with the ACM SIGMOD Innovations Award. García-Molina died of cancer on the eve of his 65th birthday.

Awards (2010) VLDB 10-year Best Paper Award for the paper entitled "The Evolution of the Web and Implications for an Incremental Crawler" in VLDB 2000. (2009) SIGMOD Best Demo Award for the demo entitled "CourseRank: A Social System for Course Planning". (2007) ICDE Influential Paper Award for the paper entitled "Disk Striping" in ICDE 1986. This early paper on disk striping significantly influenced subsequent work on RAID storage. (2007) Honorary doctorate from ETH Zurich for outstanding work in computer science.

References

External links Héctor García-Molina's Personal Web page at Stanford University El Universal: El mexicano que asesoró a los creadores de Google Archived 2006-11-18 at the Wayback Machine (in Spanish) → On the Origins of Google Videolecture on Web Information Management: Past, Present and Future "Excelling Beyond the Spreadsheet" Presentation at the 2008 Yahoo! Research Big Thinkers Series

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Héctor García-Molina

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Héctor García-Molina claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Héctor García-Molina before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Héctor García-Molina ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Héctor García-Molina

In research: Héctor García-Molina appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Héctor García-Molina in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Héctor García-Molina is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1954 births, 2019 deaths, American computer scientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Héctor García-Molina outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Héctor García-Molina in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Héctor García-Molina means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Héctor García-Molina out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Héctor García-Molina in simple terms?

Why does Héctor García-Molina matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Héctor García-Molina?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Héctor García-Molina.