Throughout Gio’s time with MITRE, my mother Joy had the pleasure of working with him on a number of cases for the Department of Treasury. In addition to his valuable expertise, Gio offered kindness, friendship and many hilarious anecdotes. Our family has many fond memories of the day excursions and dinner parties we took with Gio and Voy around San Francisco and Stanford.

One particular memory has resonated strongly with me in these recent times. In 2007, my mother Joy received an invitation from Gio to bring the kids (my brother Andrew and I) to the Stanford campus. Gio wanted us to experience a research presentation that Steven, the son of one of his PHD students would be giving.

At the time, I was 12 years old and it was thrilling to be included, even though I didn’t understand anything about research topic at hand. Upon entering the grounds with Gio, I remember Steven looking surprised to see children seated alongside the Stanford faculty advisers who would be giving him feedback during his presentation’s dry-run. (But Steven kindly rolled with the circumstances & we even got Korean snacks from Steven before he started his presentation!)

After the presentation, Gio took my brother and I on a stroll through the campus & we were introduced to the wonders of Greek food, Rodin and the formidable Gates of Hell! It was a day of new food, new experiences, and it imparted us with a sense of curiosity and excitement for all the new things we could try and aspire to in the future.

14 years later in 2021, I went through the process of presenting my own doctoral defense. Thanks to Gio, I already had a frame of reference for what presenting to a panel of faculty advisers could look like & it made the process that much more familiar / less terrifying.

Our family will always remember Gio’s generosity, kindness, and the desire to learn he instilled in us.

Gio Weiderhold Remembrance

Comments Delivered by Ted Shortliffe
June 24, 2023
Stanford University Faculty Club
(via Zoom)

Let me begin by mentioning that, in putting together my thoughts for today, I took the time to read the online autobiographical notes that Gio wrote to summarize his life and career. It is a fascinating read that beautifully summarizes his many contributions, but also reflects his clear writing style, his ability to innovate and to see the relationships among the many technical and human areas that interested him, and his absolute devotion both to his professional life and to his family. Voy emerges as a key element throughout, and it was natural to think of them as a unique team. You will find his autobiography via the web site for today’s remembrance, and I recommend it to everyone as a wonderful way to appreciate all that Gio achieved and to reflect on how he affected a huge number of lives.

I first met Gio fleetingly during my first year of medical school in 1970. I was doing some programming work for Dr. Stan Cohen’s drug interaction warning project, so I became aware of the computing environment at the medical school. Although Stan’s project ran on its own minicomputer, for various classes I also became a user of the ACME computer system. Developed through the visionary PI-ship of Josh Lederberg (Chair of Genetics), with support from NIH and NLM, ACME was directed and executed by Gio. He developed a remarkable team of scientists and technicians who made ACME a unique contributor in the Stanford medical environment, and I should note that his partnership with Voy was already evident in that she wrote the manual for the system and taught ACME classes for physicians and medical researchers. I met both Gio and Voy during this period, while still a first-year student.

With the transition from ACME to SUMEX at Stanford, Gio decided to return to student mode to pursue his PhD in the medical information sciences program at UCSF, directed by Dr. Scott Blois. It accordingly happened that he and I were pursuing our PhDs in parallel. I had added PhD studies to MD studies through the grad special doctoral option at Stanford. In this program I was permitted to name my own degree, and I adopted the same naming convention that Gio was pursuing at UCSF: medical information science. When we graduated, we were among a small handful of people in the country who had chosen to pursue formal doctoral training at the intersection of medicine and computer science. It was natural that we would be sympatico and would interact frequently. Gio had joined the Stanford CS faculty in 1977, with his special expertise in databases, and in 1979 I joined the medical school faculty in the Department of Medicine after completing my clinical training in internal medicine.

Almost immediately I began to get inquiries from other students who were interested in getting the kind of doctoral degree that Gio and I had obtained. They too wanted to work at the intersection of medicine and computer science. With faculty support from Stan Cohen and others in the medical school, plus Gio and Bruce Buchanan in computer science, I proposed to the university a new interdisciplinary degree program in Medical Information Sciences. This effort began when I was a relatively new assistant professor, and one hurdle was to get the blessing of the computer science department. Gio played a key role in helping to get CS support, assuring the faculty that the anticipated degree program would be rigorous computationally, scientifically oriented, and highly selective in the admission of MS and PhD students.  

First proposed in 1981, the new program was approved by the faculty senate and the provost in October 1982, accepted its first 4 students in 1983, and was successful in attracting a training grant from the National Library of Medicine in 1984. This early annual report highlighted the key role that Gio played in getting this program off the ground and providing credible computer science input. 

The new MIS Program grew rapidly and moved into the new Medical School Office Building, which was to become the program’s home for about 35 years. Gio was always a key participant who provided guidance to trainees, taught courses, and was dissertation advisor for some of our students. He participated regularly at our annual retreats at Asilomar and was a co-editor of the first two editions of our informatics textbook, which is now in its 5th edition and is the introductory textbook in the field internationally (with translations in several languages). There is no way that informatics would have flourished at Stanford, and arguably elsewhere, if it were not for Gio’s formative role in bringing discipline and respect to the nascent field. 

I remember well the period when Gio took time off to work in DC for DARPA. He and Voy chose to live in a moored houseboat in the harbor there (the only one with a hard-wired ARPAnet connection!) and often hosted events – including invitations to our students and faculty who were in town for a major informatics meeting. That houseboat party was truly memorable.

There is much more that could be said, of course, but I hope I have conveyed the tremendous friendship and commitment that Gio displayed as we developed a respected research and education program at the intersection of medicine and computer science. He was fun, but serious when appropriate, and a wonderful mentor. He was also a tremendous role model, both in his professional and personal life. You will be hearing some comments soon from James Wang, one of our informatics students and a Weiderhold advisee.

Through it all, Voy was at his side on social occasions, and sometimes in the work environment as well. Their family life and children were never neglected, and I greatly respected the example that they set for all of us. Our last get-together was for an informal dinner in New York City when they were visiting town. It was a fun evening in a French bistro – one of those events that brings back copious memories and makes one grateful for the inspirational people with whom they have worked and shared social moments. I will be eternally grateful for Gio and Voy and their friendship with so many of us.

A House on the Water
by Theda and Oscar Firschein

When Oscar joined DARPA in Washington, DC, he was told that Gio from Stanford was also going there. A lunch meeting was arranged at the Firschein house in Menlo Park so that we could meet each other.
The Firscheins asked whether the Wiederholds had found a place to stay for the two years in DC and the Wiederholds said with a twinkle in their eyes, "Yes, we have a place on the water."
Well, the place on the water was really on the water - a houseboat!. When the Firscheins found out that there was an adjoining houseboat available, they bought it. Thus was born the DARPA "navy."
Both boats were used for the DARPA parties, with Voy cooking up a storm of wok cooking on her boat, and Theda making deserts on hers.
The DARPA years were great fun and the location of the boats was perfect for museum visits and Cherry Blossom Festivals.
We will always remember the houses on the water and the great times we had with the Wiederholds.
Theda and Oscar

Gio was among the first people I met when I came to Stanford from the Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1971. I had just taken a leadership role in the DENDRAL AI in physical chemistry project in the Stanford Department of Genetics. Genetics was an unusual place for a computer-centered research project, but that was due to Joshua Lederberg's prescient view of the importance of computing in biomedicine. Gio was the head and developer of the ACME computer system funded by the NIH and led by Lederberg and Edward Feigenbaum (Department of Computer Science). ACME introduced the Stanford Medical School research and clinical faculty to an innovative time-shared computer resource and Gio's time-oriented clinical database system. ACME was followed by the SUMEX-AIM national network-based computer resource, again led by Lederberg and Feigenbaum and that I headed. SUMEX-AIM was focused broadly on AI applications in biomedicine and Gio's biomedical database work continued there. Gio and I collaborated in many ways, including on a chapter, Essential Concepts for Medical Computing, in the first textbook on Medical Informatics by Shortliffe et al. We remained close colleagues and friends throughout the 20-year lifetime of SUMEX-AIM. Our friendship continued after SUMEX-AIM and we collaborated from time to time on elements of Gio's work to document computer science history. I am left with many fond and happy memories of Gio as brilliant computer scientist, generous colleague, and friend.

I have known Gio Wiederhold via his research papers and the database book I was using when I was teaching a database course. I imagined Professor Wiederhold as a serious, stern scholar – I am not sure why. When I met Gio in person in 1990 at the NSF “Lagunita” Database Workshop, I found Gio to be a warm, energetic, broadminded, quick-witted person with lots of great ideas bubbling from him. I further found out more about Gio at the ACM SIGMOD Conference 1990 that was held in Atlantic City, NJ. I ran into him walking briskly on the boardwalk, as did I, so we talked a lot about databases, medical informatics, temporal databases, knowledge bases, papers presented at the conference, and future research, but also about our interests, including history, arts, and I was astonished that Gio could sing Tom Lehrer’s songs, “Lobachevsky” (... plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize. Only be sure always to call it please, "research".), “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”, etc. When Gio came to DARPA in 1991, I met his wonderful wife Voy and enjoyed lovely meals and good times on their houseboat at Washington Harbor. Gio and Voy have hosted colleagues, students, friends are visitors, including me, my mother, my husband, and our son at their house in the woods off of Skyline Drive and their home in San Francisco. Over the many years we enjoyed our discussions with Gio and Voy and their other friends, Voy’s wonderful cooking, and walks with them in the woods near their house and San Francisco, the last time in San Francisco in December 2021.

Voy and Gio have been most generous friends over the years to so many people around the world. I remember that Gio liked Salvador Dali's painting “The Persistence of Memory” as it related to temporal databases. I am grateful for knowing Gio and I will keep a persistent memory of Gio as a remarkable Renaissance man and the kindest person. Gio’s passing is a great loss to the research community, his friends, and especially his family. I would like to express my deepest condolences to Voy and Gio’s family for their loss.

My closest interactions with the remarkable Gio came in two phases. The first was in 1978, when he was on the reading committee for my Stanford CS PhD thesis and provided valuable constructive feedback. The second was almost 20 years later, just after I started what became the Computer History Museum, when I helped Gio and Voy create the history exhibits in the new Gates Computer Science building. Gio's passion for communicating the history of our field to the students was inspiring.

The breadth of Gio's interests and his generosity of spirit were awesome. He left an indelible mark on the world, and he will be missed.

As my dear friend Arun Swami wrote, everything has already been said about Gio, his generosity, his kindness, especially toward us, international students, who were so far from home without any of the easy means of communication that we have today. Gio and Voy were very protective of us, guiding and helping us, giving us opportunities and making us feel at home with them. I have fond memories of Thanksgiving and other parties we were invited to.

Speaking of generosity: Gio not only supported me financially during my studies by giving me a position as a research assistant, but he also offered me an internship at Stanford Medical Center which allowed me to stay longer in the Bay Area after my graduation. Thanks to that, I was able to find a job in a startup some time later. I got my green card and... I returned to France. I am forever grateful for all Gio and Voy have done for me.

My deepest thoughts to Voy, who is the light and joy of the family. Gio was blessed with her by his side.

Dear dear Gio, you will be missed forever.

Through my wife Dr Bhavani Thuraisingham I was a friend of Gio and Voy. Gio was a thorough gentleman and when we were visiting San Francisco Gio and Voy drove us around the city and showed us the sights of this beautiful city. Gio was always gracious to me and we had a common interest - IC engines and cars.

What can I say about Gio that has not been said by others? I'll share some thoughts anyway in case they are new.

He was an a caring, smart, and thoughtful mentor and guide to me. A couple of stories.

1. I was always driven to figure out things on my own and Gio encouraged that. When I came back from a summer internship at HP Labs with a research idea, Gio said great, go for it. But he was also large hearted enough to say: There is a new faculty member in EECS called Anoop Gupta. Go and talk with him. I did so and that resulted in Anoop collaborating with me in my work and being on my thesis committee!
2. The first time I did the Advanced exams for Systems Phd students, it was an oral exam. Having never really done an intensive oral session before, I panicked and essentially blew it in the exam even though I knew the materials and could have answered the questions. I was mortified and stood forlornly outside. Gio came out, took me to his office, and very kindly said that I did not make it in that exam but all the examiners realized that I had stage fright. He had full confidence in me. His words made a world of difference to me. This was Gio at his finest for me.
3. Even though most of my Phd research work was on driven by me, I knew that I had Gio's unflagging support and encouragement. What a wonderful feeling to know that one attempt hard things with the assurance that Gio would be there to hep as needed.

I cannot end this note without acknowledging the wonderful role played by Voy too. She made us all feel at home and would make sure to talk with each one of us. They are truly a blessed couple!

Thank you, Gio. I owe a lot to you.

I realize I am not saying anything very original here, but Gio was an amazing advisor and mentor.

He was very busy, of course. After all, what professor wasn't? But he always seemed to find time to help his students. He might have been flying off to a DARPA meeting or conference, but his brown briefcase would frequently contain at least one thesis or paper draft. When he got back, they would be returned richly marked up with comments. Often these comments were substantive and technical, but one of my favorites was more direct and stylistic: "Don't waffle!"

Gio attracted a steady stream of vistors, who came to work with Gio and the rest of us in the group. They brought their own perspectives, and one advantage for us was that while they were at Stanford, they were usually on summer mode - away from many of the responsibilities of their home institutions and more relaxed and open for collaboration or just a conversation.

I know that this is supposed to be about Gio, but Gio couldn't have been Gio without Voy ... she brought warmth and hospitality, not to mention formidable executive power. On one of my early days at Stanford, I met Voy for the first time, and was wondering to myself "Is anybody really that nice?" Marianne assured me that my first impression was absolutely accurate. Voy was (and remains) the genuine article.

I am sad to hear of Mr Wiederhold’s decease. I never met Mr Wiederhold in person, but I cherish the email conversations we had on Wiederhold genealogy. My wife and children share a common ancestor and Mr Wiederhold was of great help in uncovering our family’s history in Indonesia, and in connecting with other descendants. We are so greatful for his efforts and his meticulous documenting of the Wiederhold genealogy.

We wish his family peace and strength during these difficult times.

Gio was a great teacher and PhD adviser. We did research on AI and databases jointly between Stanford and SRI International. Diane and I had great times together with Gio and Voy. We will always remember Gio as a very special person and cherish his memory.

Gio was a truly great person and I feel very privileged to have been one of his PhD students. I have so many fond memories of Gio, Voy, their family and friends that it is hard to mention one specifically. I have to say however that I was amazed by Marianne's story about Gio dozing off during all talks only to ask the smartest questions at the end every single time... I always share the very same anedocte whenever I speak about Gio!! It was indeed all Gio.

Gio touched countless lives and will alsways be remembered.

There was no greater influence and mentor in my academic career than Gio… and he was there every step of the way: before coming to Stanford, during, and after. Gio was an amazing mentor who truly created the bookends of my graduate career. Not only did he believe in my research and create the opportunities to go deeper, he literally created my reading committee along the way. (I was Gio’s last PhD student and his first student, Hector, was head of the department at Stanford and on my committee.) I can say that Gio was there for me every step of the way and remained a positive influence even after I decided to take a turn and head into the corporate world. He is missed but his impact remains.

Gio is a generous, funny and insightful advisor.

I remember his generous markings on the first chapter of my dissertation and his critiques of my writing. I carry the learnings with me, to this day. I remember him dozing off in almost every meeting, and waking up with an insightful question or two. I still don't know how he managed that, to this day. I remember his funny walk down memory lane in computer science history. I don't know of any one else with that breadth of knowledge, to this day.

These fond memories live on, in all the lives that Gio touched.

Marianne Winslett threw a surprise party for Gio's 50th birthday. (I recall many were involved but I think of Marianne as being the primary organizer, and it was held at her house.) The main activity of the party was a Gio trivia contest.

Example questions (approximate, this is from memory).

Q: What languages does Gio speak without an accent?
Answer: None

Q: What is the link between the names of Gio's father, Gio and Gio's oldest son?
Answer: Johannes, Giovanni, Johnny -- all have the same name, just in three different languages.

There were ringers in the group (Voy and Gio's mother to start) but everyone got to play and have fun, and Gio certainly said he enjoyed it.

I have known Gio when I was a faculty at UCSF in the nineties and collaborated on several projects, including co-mentoring a PhD student. Gio was a great human being and a visionary. He lived a good life, trained many good scientists and engineers, and contributed significantly to the fields of medical computing and informatics - not just his own research areas but also many others. Gio funded the first large program project grant of Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS), when he was a DoD program director and thus helped kick off a new field and, in fact, launch a new multi-billion industry that changed clinical practice of radiology today. His tour of DoD also started the Digital Library initiative, which later was carried by the NSF and funded the Stanford project that developed Google. I enjoyed his openness to ideas and listened to his wise comments on a great variety of topics.

The uncovering of Gio and my family connection took many years. The first time I was aware of Gio's existence was in 1968 when I overheard the Wiederhold name being mentioned over morning tea at the University Of The Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. I wondered why they were talking about me. It turned out they were talking about Gio Wiederhold, who had provided the Computer Center with software for a home grown Time Sharing System. Years later, in the eighties, I attended a conference the USA, where Gio Wiederhold was one of the speakers. That was the one and only time we personally met. Internet was in its infancy. We only started to briefly interact once Emails came into regular use and we found a common interest - The Wiederhold ancestry.

Thank you, Gio, for your contribution to this venture.

I am continuing to flesh out, via photos, voice overs and background music, the environment in which my branch of the Wiederhold ancestry lived from 1450 AD.
This being the same as Gio's ancestry up to roughly 1850. Gio and my twigs branch out from Karl Wilhelm, a Lutheran minister in Mariensee near Danzig, Prussia, and Laurette Friedrika nee Ahrends. Their first child, Karl Konrad Friedrich Gustav born 1831, is Gio's great grand father while the last of their twelve children, Johannes Thomas Benjamin, born 1858, is my grandfather.

Condolences to Voy and children, Gio will surely be missed. From what I have read about him he was larger than life!

RIP

I remember Gio's kindness and that he would provide a friendly and nurturing interest in students that he did not advise, simply trying to help everyone he could.

I also remember his delight in clever hacks. When Gio would arrive at a seminar he always liked to boot up his little Windows laptop so he could take notes. But the damn thing would emit that loud Windows boot chime and annoy everyone in the seminar. Windows did not provide a setting for stopping that behavior. Finally Gio found a solution: he would plug earphones into the earphone jack so the chime went into the earphones and could not be heard -- he was clearly thrilled in that solution to this vexing problem!

Gio was an exceptionally generous man. I owe him a fantastic, 25-year career at Stanford. In 1989 I had worked at HP Labs for ten years, when my need to pursue research driven purely by curiosity, rather than product potential grew overwhelming, and psychologically urgent.

I approached Gio without introduction. He invited me to present my work to the famous Friday Database Lunch. Just based on his own research curiosity he gave me one of the precious desks in his lab's crowded building. No money changed hands, as it usually does with visiting industry scholars. I immediately began learning, and loving the group that Gio had created. Later, Hector Garcia-Molina, one of Gio's students, found me at that desk, and hired me into the position from which I only just retired. Without hyperbole, Gio changed my life significantly for the best I could have hoped for.

Although I am an academic grandchild of Gio, my most memorable moments with him were not about work. During my Stanford CS PhD years, I assisted Gio in maintaining the Gates Computer Science building's computer history exhibit. One of the highlights was an early Google server partially made out of Lego pieces, which really inspired me and a lot of visitors. I was also privileged to see him design and install a tilted display containing heavy printer parts next to a staircase in Gates building by himself, which required engineering perfection. I even got to see a huge warehouse of the Computer History Museum full of computer artifacts when moving a historic computer called the "S-1 Mark 1" to Gates building for display. Gio had a fatherly presence in the Stanford InfoLab. He attended most Infolunches and gave students constructive feedback on their talks with invaluable wisdom. One day, he took all the InfoLab members to see the opera Aida in San Francisco as a social event. Besides being really fun, I recall the point was that we need to have a broader perspective beyond just research. I do have many other stories, and what I learned from Gio has helped me during critical moments in my career. Gio, I dearly miss you and will always remember our good old days. Thank you for being my true hero.

I just learned of Professor Wiederhold's passing while searching the Stanford faculty website. I'm really sorry to hear this. I didn't know him while I studied at Stanford, but he became a friend and colleague over the last decade when we found a common interest in intellectual property and software code analysis. While many in academia dismissed my work in the field of software forensics, he welcomed me, had discussions with me, and invited me to speak in his classes. I also enjoyed his stories about his students who had gone on to great accomplishments. I will miss him.

I was very fortunate to get to know Gio as a new faculty member in the Stanford InfoLab. Gio was already retired at that point, but he still came to the lab for our group lunches every week and participated wholeheartedly. He gave the students (and other faculty) great feedback on their ideas, he told a lot of funny stories from the past, and he helped maintain a great culture, including "trip reports" by everyone who traveled and unique treats for the lab. It was inspiring to see someone so accomplished who created this great culture from scratch and was still helping everybody in the lab.

I have known Gio since the eighties when I was a postdoc in the database group at University of Stuttgart and later a project leader at IBM LILOG project. I had the pleasure to host Gio’s family in Stuttgart while he was working as a guest scientist at IBM LILOG. From these days I was always impressed by his brilliant analyses of scientific problems and the valuable advice he gave to me. Since then we stayed in contact for the next 3 decades where I had the pleasure to visit him and Voy very often in Stanford and in their home in San Francisco. I will never forget the inspiring informal discussions as well as the delicious Chinese dinners Voy offered to us.
Gio and Voy also organized my sabbatical in Stanford in 1998 and even found a house to rent in Palo Alto for our family of 5 children. What a pleasure to sit with him in a technical meeting or presentation and listen to his wise comments and sharp-witted questions.

We will always remember his friendliness and helpfulness we could enjoy so often.
Rudi and Irene Studer

If you sat Gio down in a seminar or lecture, he would invariably fall asleep. The astonishing thing about his nodding off (which must have alarmed many of our visitors who spoke in his database seminar) is that he would invariably wake up near the end of the talk and ask intelligent and probing questions. Gio asleep was more perceptive and insightful than the rest of us awake.

Gio only gave me two direct pieces of advice while I was his PhD student, neither of which is technical:

*  Don't ask a bureaucrat whether you can do something, tell them what you are going to do. (Very useful, I passed it on to all of my own students.)
*  Exercise is bad for your health. (He would remind me of this every time I showed up at the office on crutches.)

It is with great sadness that I write this tribute to my advisor, Gio Wiederhold. Gio was not just a mentor to me, but a true friend and inspiration.

Gio was an incredibly brilliant and accomplished researcher, with a deep understanding of the methodology of conducting scientific research. One of the things I admired most about Gio was his ability to explain complex matters in an intuitive and simple way. He was always eager to explore new ideas and approaches, and his curiosity and creativity were an inspiration to me.

Gio was a kind and compassionate person, who truly cared about the well-being of his students and colleagues. He was always willing to lend a listening ear and offer words of encouragement, and his mentorship was a true gift.

Gio's passing is a great loss, and I will miss him dearly. I will always be grateful for the impact he had on my life and career. Rest in peace, Gio. Your legacy will live on forever.

I have met Gio more that 40 years ago at professional gatherings and at then at second ICDE and we have stayed in regular contact since then. Gio has had a very big influence in my career not only by supporting me in getting various of my research positions but also through many professional discussions on future research directions. Professionally Gio never retired and kept active all the time and kept influencing me, even after my own retirement.

Me and my wife have stayed numerous times at his apartment in Opera Plaza and we have very much enjoyed our time with him and his wife Voy. Together have explored San Francisco and its cultural offerings.

We will always redeemer him, his kind and creative personality and the impact he has left in our life.

Erich and Ingrid Neuhold

I have known Gio for almost 40 years, professionally at first then later as a friend. I learned databases from his database textbook and was inspired by novel ideas sprinkled all over his research publications. Our joint work in temporal area was seminal to my work on temporal granularity. His work on mediators greatly influenced my work on flexible access control.
I became friends with Gio during his stint at DARPA in Washington. I fondly remember sharing a delicious meal cooked by his wife Voy on his house boat by the waterfront in DC.  I last met him at his condominium when I was in San Francisco in 2014.
I want to convey my heartfelt condolences to Voy. I will miss him. RIP Gio!

We are deeply saddened to know that Stanford Professor Emeritus Gio Wiederhold passed away.

He is a good friend of Professor SA Shixuan of Renmin University, and a good friend of all the teachers in our database team of Renmin University. 

He was one of the pioneers in the field of databases and data engineering, and we will always remember him for his tremendous contributions. 

I was extremely saddened to learn of the passing of Gio. He not only was an incredible advisor when I was in graduate school but also has been a supportive mentor who I could go to to seek advice after I started working. I will always remember the many conversations we had. I will always be grateful for the invaluable wisdom and guidance he imparted to me, both personally and professionally.

Gio was a truly kind and compassionate person, and it was an honor to have known him. His dedication to his students, his approach to research, and his way of life made a lasting impact on my own advising, research, and career.

I had a chance to interact with Gio at Stanford from 1996 and 2001, and he served on my defense committee. He and Voy also provided a lot of help to me during some of my difficult times.

He was knowledgeable, nice, happy, and approachable, and he always had a smile on his face. He made the DB group at Stanford a great place for all of us. I still remember the great party at his beautiful home in the redwood trees. Since then I continue using his data about movies in my classes at UC Irvine, and the data always reminded me of his smile ...

Gio will be missed.

Professor Gio Wiederhold made an exceptional impact on the whole world thru the actions taken by him, supplemented by the actions of the individuals whom he taught and mentored, and the actions taken by their successive generations of trainees and mentorees. While this ripple effect took place based partly on his long association with Stanford University, it also took place due to his involvement and physical presence at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK).

Soon after IITK was established during the sixties, Gio spent a year there. He played a major role in fostering the vision for Computer Science classes and getting an IBM computer there. The national preeminence of that computer science center was one of the two reasons that I choose IITK for my undergraduate studies in 1969. Soon graduating from there, I joined the Government of India to help develop and implement the strategy for CS and IS in India. My first project was to coordinate a proposal for the creation of the National Data Center (which was subsequently renamed as National Informatics Center and is a big endeavor). That proposal was sent to Professor Gio Wiederhold who was serving as a United Nations Development Programme consultant on this effort. It was the first time I had heard of Gio. His efforts greatly contributed to India becoming a leader in the global IT industry and to persons from India being engaged in IT efforts in countries around the world.

After I joined MIT and started working on database issues, Gio was instrumental in the DARPA funding award to us. Subsequently, I had the privilege of working with him on several joint papers in diverse journals, book chapters, and having him as a guest speaker in my courses and vice versa.

In my interactions with Gio over several decades, I have always admired his ability to think outside the box and develop pragmatic solutions that could be deployed at national and global levels. He was always willing to help others. Further, he had a unique interdisciplinary outlook which is reflected in the multiple concurrent appointments that he had at Stanford University. Despite having a busy schedule, he responded quickly to messages. And he really thought of the whole world as the real audience.

While kings may be judged by what geographic areas their respective kingdoms were at the times that they came and left, as well as their roles in the changes in the territories, Gio must be applauded for his professional work and its broad impact and applicability: he has played a pivotal role in the rapid growth and broad adoption of computer science over several decades. 

While he has left us, he and his great work will be remembered and appreciated for ages to come.

Gio never really got old, in his mind.
I visited him once, in 2021, in connection with a write-up on his life and adventures in India.
The plan was to visit for an hour, do a write-up, get his approval, and print in the IITK campus magazine (as one of the pioneers of computer education in India).
That one hour of stories turned to two, three and then four hours, after which I, rather than Gio, got tired and had to leave. He was still going strong, such was his vigor. He loved his travels and photographs of the time, and enjoyed sharing.

Gio will be missed, but not forgotten.

Shirish Joshi