Edgar F. Codd is the father of the
relational database. Born in 1923 in Portland, UK, he got his PhD at the
University of Michigan. He received the 1981
Turing award for "his
fundamental and
continuing contributions to the
theory and
practice of
database management systems."
His 1970 paper "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks" sparked a flurry of research in the field, and is partially responsible for why E2 even exists. The paper can be read by the public at http://www.acm.org/classics/nov95/
E. F. Codd is still actively involved in relational database research.