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. He stood first in the IIT
Joint Entrance Examination. 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. It was here that he met
Thomas M. Cover, the renowned
information theorist, 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. 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. Joy Thomas was an adjunct professor at Columbia University and Stanford University and held a number of patents. 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. == Patents ==