Jerome Rubin, Helped Forge LexisNexis, Dies At 86

Published January 12, 2012 3:18AM (EST)

NEW YORK (AP) — Jerome Rubin, who helped bring to market the commercial online database known as LexisNexis and the display technology behind millions of Amazon Kindles and other e-readers, has died in New York. He was 86.

Rubin's children say he died of a stroke at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan on Monday.

Rubin was trained as a physicist and attorney, but in the 1970s was hired to make commercially viable what was then a novel product — a computer database of state case law. Launched in 1973, Lexis was joined a few years later by its online cousin Nexis.

Rubin later worked at Times Mirror Company and at MIT. He helped found a company in the mid-1990s to develop the electronic paper technology used in many of today's e-readers.


By Salon Staff

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