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Fred Brooks

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Frederick Phillips Brooks Jr. (April 19, 1931 – November 17, 2022) was an American computer architect, software engineer, and computer scientist, best known for managing development of IBM's System/360 family of mainframe computers and the OS/360 software support package, then later writing candidly about those experiences in his seminal book The Mythical Man-Month.<ref name="mmm"/>

In 1976, Brooks was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for "contributions to computer system design and the development of academic programs in computer sciences".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Brooks received many awards, including the National Medal of Technology in 1985 and the Turing Award in 1999.<ref name="dblp">Template:DBLP</ref><ref name="Shustek2015">Template:Cite journal</ref>

EducationEdit

Born on April 19, 1931, in Durham, North Carolina,<ref name="TuringAward">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> he attended Duke University, graduating in 1953 with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics, and he received a Ph.D. in applied mathematics (computer science) from Harvard University in 1956, supervised by Howard Aiken.<ref name="mathgene">Template:MathGenealogy</ref>

Brooks served as the graduate teaching assistant for Ken Iverson at Harvard's graduate program in "automatic data processing", the first such program in the world.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Career and researchEdit

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 $10 million scientific supercomputer of which nine were sold, and the IBM 7950 Harvest computer for the National Security Agency. Subsequently, he became manager for developing the IBM System/360 family of computers and the OS/360 software package. During this time he coined the term "computer architecture".<ref name="TuringAward"/>

In 1964, Brooks accepted an invitation to come to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and founded the university's computer science department. He chaired it for 20 years. Template:As of he was still engaged in active research there, mainly in virtual environments<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> and scientific visualization.<ref name="IBM archive">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The Brooks Computer Science Building on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus is named in his honor.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

A few years after leaving IBM, he wrote The Mythical Man-Month. The seed for the book was planted by IBM's then-CEO Thomas J. Watson Jr., who asked in Brooks's exit interview why it was so much harder to manage software projects than hardware projects. In this book, Brooks made the now-famous statement: "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later", which has since come to be known as Brooks's law.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> In addition to The Mythical Man-Month, Brooks is also known for the paper "No Silver Bullet – Essence and Accident in Software Engineering".<ref name="NoAgBullet">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

In 2004 in a talk at the Computer History Museum and also in a 2010 interview 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."<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

A "20th anniversary" edition of The Mythical Man-Month with four additional chapters was published in 1995.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

As well as The Mythical Man-Month,<ref name="mmm">Template:Cite book</ref> Brooks has authored or co-authored many books and peer reviewed papers<ref name="dblp"/> including Automatic Data Processing,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> "No Silver Bullet",<ref name="NoAgBullet"/> Computer Architecture,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and The Design of Design.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Service and membershipsEdit

Brooks served on a number of US national boards and committees, including:<ref name="homepage">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • 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 (1987–92)

Awards and honorsEdit

In chronological order:<ref name="homepage"/>

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  • Eckert–Mauchly Award, Association for Computing Machinery and The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers–Computer Society (2004)
  • IEEE Virtual Reality Career Award (2010)

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In January 2005, he gave the Turing Lecture on the subject of "Collaboration and Telecollaboration in Design".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Personal lifeEdit

Brooks was an evangelical Christian who was active with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.<ref name="unc">Faculty Biography at UNC.</ref>

Brooks married Nancy Lee Greenwood in 1956. They have three children.<ref name="TuringAward"/> He named his first son after Kenneth E. Iverson.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Brooks died on November 17, 2022, at age 91. He had been in poor health following a stroke.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="UNC2022">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

ReferencesEdit

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External linksEdit

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