A Brit with math and chemistry degrees from Oxford University, Codd emigrated to the U.S. after World War II, where he found work with IBM.
After earning a doctorate, he transferred to IBM’s San Jose, Calif., facility and started working with data management systems. He found the existing systems were “seat-of-the-pants, with no theory at all” behind them, he once said. “I began reading documentation and I was disgusted.” He decided to do something about it, and in 1970 proposed a new solution based on math.
His “relational data base” model, which not only stored information more efficiently but allowed easier access to different combinations of data, was ignored at first, but IBM’s “SQL/DS” was finally introduced in 1981. The new model really hit the big time in 1986, when Oracle released its data base solution, making founder Larry Ellison a billionaire. Codd died of heart failure at his home in Williams Island, Fla., on April 18. He was 79.