James Martin (19 October 1933 – 24 June 2013) was an English information technology consultant and author, known for his work on information technology engineering. Biography James Martin was born on 19 October 1933 in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, England. He earned a degree in physics at Keble College, Oxford. Martin joined IBM in 1959, and from the 1980s on, established several IT consultancy firms. Starting in 1981 with Dixon Doll and Tony Carter he established DMW (Doll Martin Worldwide) in London, UK, which was later renamed James Martin Associates (JMA), which was (partly) bought by Texas Instruments Software in 1991. He later co-founded Database Design Inc. (DDI), in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to promulgate his database design techniques and to develop tools to help implement them. After becoming the market leader in information technology engineering software, DDI was renamed KnowledgeWare and eventually purchased by Fran Tarkenton, who took it public. Martin was awarded an honorary fellowship by Keble College, Oxford and an honorary Doctor of Science degree by the University of Warwick in July 2009. He gave the Turing Lecture in 2008. According to Computerworld'''s 25th anniversary issue, he was ranked fourth among the 25 individuals who have most influenced the world of computer science. Personal life From the 1990s onwards, Martin lived on his own private island, Agar's Island, in Bermuda, where he died on 24 June 2013, apparently in a swimming accident. Work Martin was an expert in the field of systems design, software development methodology, information technology engineering and computer-aided software engineering. He was one of the first to promote fourth-generation programming languages, and was one of the main developers of the Rapid Application Development methodology. Information Technology Engineering Information technology engineering (ITE) is an approach to designing and developing information systems. It has a somewhat chequered history that follows two very distinct threads. It is said to have originated in Australia between 1976 and 1980, and appears first in the literature in 1981 in the Savant Institute publication Information Engineering by James Martin and Clive Finkelstein. Information technology engineering first provided data analysis and database design techniques that could be used by database administrators (DBAs) and by systems analysts to develop database designs and systems based upon an understanding of the operational processing needs of organisations for the 1980s. The Finkelstein thread evolved after 1980 into the data processing (DP)-driven variant of IE. From 1983 till 1986 IE evolved