Stanley Zdonik, an American computer scientist and academic, died on February 5, 2026.
He was 78. Zdonik specialized in database management systems and was a tenured professor of computer science at Brown University.
Born in Boston, he lived in the Boston area his entire life. After completing two bachelor’s degrees and two master’s degrees at MIT, he earned a PhD in database management under Michael Hammer. In the mid-1970s, he worked on the Prophet data management system at Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. He later became a leading researcher in object-oriented databases, published more than one hundred peer-reviewed papers, and was named an ACM Fellow in 2006. He also co-founded StreamBase and Vertica and served as a technical advisor for Attivio.
Stanley Zdonik (/zəˈdɒnɪk/ zə-DON-ik June 25, 1947 – February 5, 2026) was an American computer scientist specializing in database management systems. He was a tenured professor of computer science at Brown University. Zdonik lived in the Boston area his entire life. After completing two bachelor’s and two master’s degrees at MIT, he then earned a PhD in database management under Michael Hammer.