Frederick Phillips Brooks, Jr. (born April 19, 1931) is a software engineer and computer scientist, best known for managing the development of IBM's System/360 family of computers and the OS/360 software support package, then later writing candidly about the process in his seminal book The Mythical Man-Month. Brooks has received many awards, including the National Medal of Technology in 1985 and the Turing Award in 1999.
Life and career
Born in Durham, North Carolina, he attended Duke University, graduating in 1953, and he received a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics (Computer Science) from Harvard University in 1956. Howard Aiken was his advisor.
Brooks joined IBM in 1956, working in Poughkeepsie, New York and Yorktown, New York. He worked on the architecture of the IBM 7030 Stretch, a $10m scientific supercomputer of which nine were sold, and the IBM 7950 Harvest computer for the National Security Agency. Subsequently, he became manager for the development of the System/360 family of computers and the OS/360 software package. During this time he coined the term computer architecture.
It was in The Mythical Man-Month that Brooks made the now-famous statement: "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." This has since come to be known as the Brooks's law. In addition to The Mythical Man-Month, Brooks is also known for the paper No Silver Bullet — Essence and Accident in Software Engineering.
In 1964, Brooks founded the Department of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and chaired it for 20 years. As of 2010[update] he was still engaged in active research there, primarily in virtual environments and scientific visualization.[1]
In a 2010 interview by Kevin Kelly for an article[2] in Wired Magazine, Brooks was asked "What do you consider your greatest technological achievement?" Brooks responded "The most important single decision I ever made was to change the IBM 360 series from a 6-bit byte to an 8-bit byte, thereby enabling the use of lowercase letters. That change propagated everywhere."
A "20th anniversary" edition of The Mythical Man-Month with four additional chapters was published in 1995.[3]
In January 2005 he gave the IEE/BCS annual Turing Lecture in London on the subject of "Collaboration and Telecollaboration in Design". In 1994 he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.
He is an evangelical Christian who is active with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.[4]
Bibliography
- Brooks, Frederick P.; Kenneth Iverson (1963). Automatic Data Processing.
- Brooks, Frederick P.; Kenneth Iverson (1965). Automatic Data Processing, System/360 Edition. ISBN 0-471-10605-4.
- Brooks, Jr., Frederick P. (1975). The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-00650-2. (Reprinted with corrections, January 1982)
- Brooks, Jr., Frederick P. (1995). [[The Mythical Man-Month]]: Essays on Software Engineering: Anniversary Edition. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-83595-9. (A republication of The Mythical Man-Month with four extra chapters.)
- Brooks, Frederick P. (1987). No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering. (Reprinted in the 1995 edition of The Mythical Man-Month)
- Brooks, Frederick P.; G. A. Blaauw (1997). [[Computer Architecture: Concepts and Evolution]]. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-10557-8.
- Brooks, Jr., Frederick P. (2010). [[The Design of Design]]: Essays from a Computer Scientist. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 978-0-201-36298-5.
Service and memberships
He has served on a number of US national boards and committees.[5]
- Defense Science Board (1983–86)
- Member, Artificial Intelligence Task Force (1983–84)
- Chairman, Military Software Task Force (1985–87)
- Member, Computers in Simulation and Training Task Force (1986–87)
- National Science Board (1987–1992)
Awards
In chronological order:[5]
- Fellow, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (1968)
- McDowell Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Computer Art, IEEE Computer Group (1970)
- Computer Sciences Distinguished Information Services Award, Information Technology Professionals (1970)
- Guggenheim Fellowship for studies on computer architecture and human factors of computer systems, Cambridge University, England (1975)
- Member, National Academy of Engineering (1976)
- Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1976)
- Computer Pioneer Award, IEEE Computer Society (1982)
- National Medal of Technology and Innovation (1985)
- Thomas Jefferson Award, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1986)
- Distinguished Service Award, Association for Computing Machinery (1987)
- Harry Goode Memorial Award, American Federation of Information Processing Societies (1989)
- Foreign Member, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (1991)
- Honorary Doctor of Technical Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich (1991)
- John von Neumann Medal, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (1993)
- Fellow (initial inductee), Association for Computing Machinery (1994)
- Distinguished Fellow, British Computer Society (1994)
- Foreign Member of the Royal Academy of Engineering, UK (1994)
- Allen Newell Award, Association for Computing Machinery (1994)
- Bower Award and Prize in Science, Franklin Institute (1995)
- CyberEdge Journal Annual Sutherland Award (April 1997)
- A. M. Turing Award, Association for Computing Machinery (1999)
- Member, National Academy of Science (2001)
- Fellow Award, Computer History Museum (2001)
- Eckert-Mauchly Award, Association for Computing Machinery and The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers–Computer Society (2004)
- IEEE Virtual Reality Career Award (2010)
See also
References
External links
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| Name | Brooks, Frederick Phillips, Jr. |
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| Short description | Computer scientist |
| Date of birth | (1931-04-19) April 19, 1931 (age 81) |
| Place of birth | Durham, North Carolina |
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