Fred Brooks

{{Infobox scientist

| name = Fred Brooks

| birth_name = Frederick Phillips Brooks Jr.

| image = Fred Brooks (cropped square).jpg

| caption = Fred Brooks in 2007

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1931|04|19|mf=y}}

| birth_place = Durham, North Carolina, U.S.

| death_date = {{Death date and age|2022|11|17|1931|04|19}}

| death_place=Chapel Hill, North Carolina, U.S.

| field = {{ubl |Computer science |Operating systems |Software engineering}}

| alma_mater = {{ubl |Duke University |Harvard University}}

| thesis_title = The Analytic Design of Automatic Data Processing Systems

| thesis_url = https://www.proquest.com/docview/301934402

| thesis_year = 1956

| workplaces = IBM{{Cite journal |last=Brooks |first=F. P. |year=1960 |title=The execute operations—a fourth mode of instruction sequencing |journal=Communications of the ACM |volume=3 |issue=3 |pages=168–170 |doi=10.1145/367149.367168 |s2cid=37725430 |doi-access=free}}
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Duke University
Harvard University

| known_for = {{ubl |OS/360 |The Mythical Man-Month}}

| spouse = {{marriage|Nancy Lee Greenwood|1956}}

| children = 3

| prizes = {{Plainlist|

IEEE John von Neumann Medal (1993)
ACM Fellow (1994)
Turing Award (1999)
Member of the National Academy of Sciences (2001)
Turing Lecture (2005)}}

| doctoral_advisor = Howard H. Aiken

| doctoral_students = Andrew Glassner

| website = {{Official URL}}

}}

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.

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".{{cite web |title=NAE Website – Dr. Frederick P. Brooks |url=https://www.nae.edu/29644/Dr-Frederick-P-Brooks-Jr |publisher=National Academy of Engineering |access-date=May 21, 2021}}

Brooks received many awards, including the National Medal of Technology in 1985 and the Turing Award in 1999.{{DBLP|name=Frederick P. Brooks Jr.}}{{Cite journal |last1=Shustek |first1=Len |author1-link=Len Shustek |year=2015 |title=An interview with Fred Brooks |journal=Communications of the ACM |volume=58 |issue=11 |pages=36–40 |doi=10.1145/2822519 |issn=0001-0782 |s2cid=44303152}}

Education

Born on April 19, 1931, in Durham, North Carolina,{{cite web |last1=Booch |first1=Grady |title=Frederick Brooks - A.M. Turing Award Laureate |url=https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/brooks_1002187.cfm |website=amturing.acm.org |publisher=Association for Computing Machinery |access-date=November 20, 2022 |date=1999}} 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.{{MathGenealogy|id= 25260}}

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.{{Cite journal |first1=Kenneth E. |last1=Iverson |date=June 1954 |title=Graduate Instruction and Research |url=http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/GradIR.htm |journal=Proceedings of the First Conference on Training Personnel for the Computing Machine Field |access-date=April 9, 2016 |editor=Arvid W. Jacobson}}{{Cite journal |first1=Kenneth E. |last1=Iverson |date=December 1991 |title=A Personal View of APL |url=http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/APLPersonalView.htm |journal=IBM Systems Journal |volume=30 |pages=582–593 |doi=10.1147/sj.304.0582 |access-date=April 9, 2016 |number=4}}{{Cite book |title=Makin' Numbers |date=1999 |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=978-0-262-03263-6 |editor-first1=I. Bernard |editor-last1= Cohen |editor-link1=I. Bernard Cohen |editor-first2=Gregory W. |editor-last2=Welch}}

Career and research

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".

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. {{As of|2013}} he was still engaged in active research there, mainly in virtual environments{{Cite journal |last1=Brooks |first1=Frederick P. Jr. |date=1999 |title=What's Real About Virtual Reality |url=http://www.cs.unc.edu/~brooks/WhatsReal.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20000818152648/http://www.cs.unc.edu/~brooks/WhatsReal.pdf |archive-date=2000-08-18 |url-status=live |journal=IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications |volume=19 |issue=6 |pages=16–27 |doi=10.1109/38.799723 |s2cid=3235380 |access-date=January 22, 2015}} and scientific visualization.{{Cite web |date=January 23, 2003 |title=IBM Archives – Frederick P. Brooks Jr. |url=http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/builders/builders_brooksjr.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060904124939/http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/builders/builders_brooksjr.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=September 4, 2006 |website=IBM |access-date=August 6, 2010}} The Brooks Computer Science Building on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus is named in his honor.{{Cite web |title=Remembering Department Founder Dr. Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. |url=https://cs.unc.edu/news-article/remembering-department-founder-dr-frederick-p-brooks-jr/ |access-date=2024-09-19 |website=Computer Science |language=en-US}}

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.{{cite journal |last1=McConnell |first1=Steve |author1-link=Steve McConnell |title=From the Editor: Brooks' Law Repealed |website=www.computer.org |date=1999 |volume=16 |issue=November/December 1999 |pages=6–8 |doi=10.1109/MS.1999.10032 |url=https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/so/1999/06/s6006/13rRUEgs2JV |access-date=November 20, 2022 |publisher=IEEE Computer Society |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221120155655/https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/so/1999/06/s6006/13rRUEgs2JV |archive-date=November 20, 2022 |via=stevemcconnell.com |url-status=bot: unknown}} In addition to The Mythical Man-Month, Brooks is also known for the paper "No Silver Bullet – Essence and Accident in Software Engineering".{{Cite journal |last=Brooks |first=F. P. Jr. |year=1987 |title=No Silver Bullet – Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering |url=http://faculty.salisbury.edu/~xswang/Research/Papers/SERelated/no-silver-bullet.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121004020418/http://faculty.salisbury.edu/~xswang/Research/Papers/SERelated/no-silver-bullet.pdf |archive-date=2012-10-04 |url-status=live |journal=Computer |volume=20 |issue=4 |pages=10–19 |citeseerx=10.1.1.117.315 |doi=10.1109/MC.1987.1663532 |s2cid=372277}}{{cite journal |last1=Grier |first1=David Alan |author1-link=David Alan Grier (writer) |title=There Is Still No Silver Bullet |journal=Computer |date=February 2021 |volume=54 |issue=2 |pages=60–62 |doi=10.1109/MC.2020.3042682 |s2cid=231992114 |url=https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/co/2021/02/09353507/1r8krp0NNK0 |access-date=November 20, 2022 |quote=No article has been so central to the discussion as "No Silver Bullet" by Frederick P. Brooks. Yet, almost 35 years after he wrote this contribution to knowledge, Brooks's observation remains true.|doi-access=free}}

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."{{Cite magazine |last1=Kelly |first1=Kevin |author1-link=Kevin Kelly (editor) |date=July 28, 2010 |title=Master Planner: Fred Brooks Shows How to Design Anything |url=https://www.wired.com/2010/07/ff-fred-brooks/ |magazine=Wired |access-date=April 8, 2019}}

A "20th anniversary" edition of The Mythical Man-Month with four additional chapters was published in 1995.{{Cite web |editor1-last=Green |editor1-first=Bob |date=1995–2004 |title=The Mythical Man-Month, A Book Review |url=http://www.robelle.com/smugbook/manmonth.html |website=Robelle Solutions Technology |access-date=August 6, 2010}}{{cite web |last1=Bartlett |first1=Roscoe A. |title=Software Engineering Reading List |url=https://bartlettroscoe.github.io/reading-list/#mythical_man_month_2th_1995 |website=github.io |access-date=November 20, 2022 |language=en |date=2008}}

As well as The Mythical Man-Month,{{Cite book |last1=Brooks |first1=Frederick P. |year=1975 |url=https://archive.org/details/mythicalmanmonth00broo |title=The mythical man-month: essays on software engineering |publisher=Addison-Wesley |isbn=978-0-201-00650-6 |location=Reading, Massachusetts |url-access=registration}} Brooks has authored or co-authored many books and peer reviewed papers including Automatic Data Processing,{{Cite book |last1=Iverson |first1=Kenneth E. |author1-link=Kenneth E. Iverson |last2=Brooks |first2=Frederick P. |title=Automatic data processing: System/360 edition |publisher=Wiley |year=1969 |isbn=978-0-471-10605-0 |location=New York}} "No Silver Bullet", Computer Architecture,{{Cite book |last1=Brooks |first1=Frederick P. |last2=Blaauw |first2=Gerrit A. |author2-link=Gerrit Blaauw |year=1997 |title=Computer architecture: concepts and evolution |publisher=Addison-Wesley |isbn=978-0-201-10557-5 |location=Boston}} and The Design of Design.{{Cite book |last1=Brooks |first1=Frederick P. |year=2010 |title=The Design of Design: Essays from a Computer Scientist |publisher=Addison-Wesley Professional |isbn=978-0-201-36298-5 |location=Reading, Massachusetts}}

=Service and memberships=

Brooks served on a number of US national boards and committees, including:{{cite web |title=Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. |website=UNC Computer Science |date=April 19, 2007 |url=http://www.cs.unc.edu/~brooks/ |access-date=November 19, 2022 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20210828091748/http://www.cs.unc.edu/~brooks/ |archive-date=August 28, 2021 |url-status=live}}

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 honors=

In chronological order:

Fellow, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (1968)
W. Wallace 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, University of Cambridge, 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){{Cite web |title=F.P. Brooks |url=https://www.knaw.nl/en/members/foreign-members/3952 |access-date=July 17, 2015 |publisher=Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences |archive-date=July 21, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150721042855/https://www.knaw.nl/en/members/foreign-members/3952 |url-status=dead}}
Honorary Doctor of Technical Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich (1991)
IEEE John von Neumann Medal, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (1993)
Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (1994){{cite web|url=https://awards.acm.org/award-recipients/brooks_1002187|website=acm.org|title=Fred Brooks ACM awards}}
Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society (DFBCS) (1994)
International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng), UK (1994)
Allen Newell Award, Association for Computing Machinery (1994){{cite journal |last1=Brooks |first1=Frederick P. |year=1996 |title=The computer scientist as toolsmith II |journal=Communications of the ACM |publisher=Association for Computing Machinery |volume=39 |issue=3 |pages=61–68 |issn=0001-0782 |doi=10.1145/227234.227243 |s2cid=34572148 |quote=“The scientist builds in order to study; the engineer studies in order to build” |doi-access=free}}
Bower Award and Prize in Science, Franklin Institute (1995)
CyberEdge Journal Annual Sutherland Award (April 1997)
Turing Award, Association for Computing Machinery (1999)
Member, National Academy of Sciences (2001)
Received the Computer History Museum's Fellow Award, for his contributions to computer architecture, operating systems, and software engineering.{{Cite web |date=March 30, 2015 |title=Frederick P. Brooks – CHM Fellow Award Winner |url=https://computerhistory.org/profile/frederick-p-brooks-jr/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250210180543/https://computerhistory.org/profile/frederick-p-brooks-jr/ |archive-date=February 10, 2025 |access-date=February 10, 2025 |publisher=Computerhistory.org}} (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)

In January 2005, he gave the Turing Lecture on the subject of "Collaboration and Telecollaboration in Design".{{cite web |title=Turing Lecture – IET Conferences |url=http://conferences.theiet.org/turing/speaker/previous/index.cfm |publisher=Institution of Engineering and Technology |access-date=November 20, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150906071606/http://conferences.theiet.org/turing/speaker/previous/index.cfm |archive-date=September 6, 2015 |format=web.archive.org |date=2015 |quote=2005 – Professor Fred Brooks Jr, FREng Dist. FBCS Founding Kenan Professor of Computer Science University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – Collaboration and Telecollaboration in Design}}{{cite web |last1=Brooks |first1=Frederick P. |title=7th Annual Turing Lecture: Collaboration and Telecollaboration in Design |url=https://tv.theiet.org/?videoid=319 |website=tv.theiet.org |publisher=Institution of Engineering and Technology |access-date=November 20, 2022 |format=video |date=January 20, 2005}}

Personal life

Brooks was an evangelical Christian who was active with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.[http://cs.unc.edu/people/frederick-p-brooks-jr/ Faculty Biography] at UNC.

Brooks married Nancy Lee Greenwood in 1956. They have three children. He named his first son after Kenneth E. Iverson.{{Cite journal |last1=Brooks |first1=Frederick P. |date=August 2006 |title=The Language, the Mind, and the Man |url=http://archive.vector.org.uk/art10001240 |journal=Vector |volume=22 |access-date=March 16, 2018 |number=3}}

Brooks died on November 17, 2022, at age 91. He had been in poor health following a stroke.{{cite news |last1=Lohr |first1=Steve |date=November 23, 2022 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/23/technology/frederick-p-brooks-jr-dead.html |title=Frederick P. Brooks Jr., Computer Design Innovator, Dies at 91 |access-date=November 24, 2022 |work=The New York Times}}{{Cite news |last1=Grüner |first1=Sebastian |date=November 18, 2022 |title=8-Bit-Byte-Erfinder Fred Brooks gestorben |url=https://www.golem.de/news/nachruf-8-bit-byte-erfinder-fred-brooks-gestorben-2211-169865.html |access-date=November 18, 2022 |website=Golem.de |language=de}}{{cite news |title=Remembering Department Founder Dr. Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. |website=UNC Computer Science |date=November 18, 2022 |url=https://cs.unc.edu/news-article/remembering-department-founder-dr-frederick-p-brooks-jr/ |access-date=November 19, 2022 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20221119100810/https://cs.unc.edu/news-article/remembering-department-founder-dr-frederick-p-brooks-jr/ |archive-date=November 19, 2022 |url-status=live}}{{cite news |title=Frederick P. Brooks Jr., 1931–2022 |url=https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/heraldsun/name/frederick-brooks-obituary?id=37962920 |access-date=November 20, 2022 |work=The Herald Sun |date=November 20, 2022 |format=Legacy.com}}