Joy Aloysius Thomas (1 January 1963 – 28 September 2020) was an Indian-born American information theorist , author and a senior data scientist at Google . He was known for his contributions to information theory and was the co-author of Elements of Information Theory , a popular text book which he co-authored with Thomas M. Cover . He also held a number of patents and was the founder of startups such as 'Insights One'.

Biography [ edit ]

Joy Thomas, born on January 1, 1963, in the south Indian state of Kerala , did his schooling at St Joseph's Boys' High School, Bangalore . ^[1] He stood first in the IIT Joint Entrance Examination . ^[2] After graduating from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras , he migrated to the US where he continued his studies to secure a PhD from Stanford University in 1984. ^[3] It was here that he met Thomas M. Cover , the renowned information theorist , ^[4] and together they wrote a book in 1991, Elements of Information Theory , which is considered by many as a benchmark text book on the subject. ^{[5] [6]} In 1990, he joined the IBM Research at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center as a research staff member where he worked until he became involved in the founding of Stratify, a startup founded in 1991, which was later rebranded as Iron Mountain Digital. Later, he founded InsightsOne, another startup which was subsequently acquired by Apigee in 2014. ^[7]

Joy Thomas was an adjunct professor at Columbia University and Stanford University and held a number of patents. ^[8] He died on September 28, 2020, at Mountain View, California , at the age of 57, survived by his wife, Priya, and children, Joshua and Leah. ^[1]

Patents [ edit ]

• "US Patent ? API specification generation (Patent # 10,747,505 issued August 18, 2020) ? Justia Patents Search" . patents.justia.com . Retrieved 5 October 2020 .
• "US Patent ? Automatically extracting profile feature attribute data from event data (Patent # 10,255,300 issued April 9, 2019) ? Justia Patents Search" . patents.justia.com . Retrieved 5 October 2020 .
• "US Patent ? Method and apparatus for prediction of computer system performance based on types and numbers of active devices (Patent # 8,234,229 issued July 31, 2012) ? Justia Patents Search" . patents.justia.com . Retrieved 5 October 2020 .
• "US Patent ? Techniques for organizing data to support efficient review and analysis (Patent # 7,945,600 issued May 17, 2011) ? Justia Patents Search" . patents.justia.com . Retrieved 5 October 2020 .
• "US Patent Application ? Method and apparatus for prediction of computer system performance based on types and numbers of active devices (Application #20030023719 issued January 30, 2003) ? Justia Patents Search" . patents.justia.com . Retrieved 5 October 2020 .
• "US Patent ? Adaptive multiple dictionary data compression (Patent # 5,870,036 issued February 9, 1999) ? Justia Patents Search" . patents.justia.com . Retrieved 5 October 2020 .
• "US Patent ? Parallel compression and decompression using a cooperative dictionary (Patent # 5,729,228 issued March 17, 1998) ? Justia Patents Search" . patents.justia.com . Retrieved 5 October 2020 .

Selected bibliography [ edit ]

Books [ edit ]

• Cover, Thomas M.; Thomas, Joy A. (11 July 2006). Elements of Information Theory . Wiley. ISBN   978-0-471-74881-6 .

Articles [ edit ]

• Cover, Thomas M.; Thomas, A. (1988). "Determinant Inequalities via Information Theory" . SIAM Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications . 9 (3): 384?392. doi : 10.1137/0609033 . ISSN   0895-4798 .
• Dembo, A.; Cover, T.M.; Thomas, J.A. (1991). "Information theoretic inequalities" . IEEE Transactions on Information Theory . 37 (6): 1501?1518. doi : 10.1109/18.104312 .

References [ edit ]

External links [ edit ]

• "dblp: Joy A. Thomas" . dblp.org . Retrieved 5 October 2020 .
• "On Amazon" . www.amazon.in . Retrieved 5 October 2020 .
• "Joy Thomas's Tribute to Thomas Cover" . ISL Stanford . YouTube. 10 July 2012 . Retrieved 5 October 2020 .