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For his contributions to computer architecture, operating systems, and software engineering.
"We graphicists choreograph colored dots on a glass bottle so as to fool eye and mind into seeing desktops, spacecraft, molecules, and worlds that are not and never can be. (Paper at CHI '88) It is hard to imagine a more exciting domain for research--research we hope will help people." |
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. is Kenan Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. He grew up in North Carolina, graduated summa cum laude in physics from Duke, and took his SM and PhD in computer science at Harvard under Howard Aiken.
He soon joined IBM and served as one of the architects of the IBM Stretch and Harvest computers. From 1961-1965 he was corporate project manager for the IBM System/360, developing both the hardware and software. For this achievement, he shared the National Medal of Technology with Bob Evans and Erich Bloch.
Brooks joined UNC in 1964, where he founded the Department of Computer Science and served as chairman for its first 20 years. His research has included computer architecture, software engineering, and interactive 3-D computer graphics, or "virtual reality." His best-known book is The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (1975, 1995); his latest work is Blaauw and Brooks, Computer Architecture: Concepts and Evolution (1997).
Brooks has served on the National Science Board and the Defense Science Board. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Sciences, a foreign member of the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK) and of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His career work has been recognized with his acceptance of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) A.M. Turing Award, the Bower Science Award of the Franklin Institute, the John von Neumann Medal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, and the Allen Newell and Distinguished Service awards of the ACM.
Brooks and his wife are faculty advisors for a graduate-student chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.