Dedication to Jim Gray

As most readers undoubtedly know, Jim Gray did not return from a sailing trip he took in January of this year (2007) and has been missing since then, despite one of the most comprehensive and far reaching search operations that the world has ever seen. While the search effort was unprecedented, the willing- ness of people to volunteer their time to help in the effort was not surprising given both Jim’s manifest and widely known technical accomplishments and the many people he has befriended, helped, and mentored over the years. Thus, we dedicate this volume, the Dagstuhl Seminar on ”Atomicity: A Unifying Concept in Computer Science” to Jim Gray, whose work has done so much to shape our notion of atomicity and the many roles it can play, does play, and should not be expected to play in computer science, all topics on which Jim has published.