Frederick (Fred) P. Brooks Jr.

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Photo by Jerry Markatos


Most Recent Affiliation(s):


  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Computer Science, Professor of Computer Science

Location:


  • Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America

Bio:

  • SIGGRAPH 1999

    Fred Brooks is Kenan Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He grew up in North Carolina, graduated summa cum laude in physics from Duke and took his S.M. and Ph.D. in computer science at Harvard under Howard Aiken. He joined IBM upon graduation and was one of the architects of the IBM Stretch and Harvest computers. From 1961-65 he was Corporate Project Manager for the System/360, including development of the System/360 computer family hardware, and the Operating System/360 software. For this work he shared the National Medal of Technology with Bob Evans and Erich Bloch.

    He joined UNC in 1964, where he founded the Department of Computer Science and chaired it for its first 20 years. His research has been in computer architecture, software engineering, and interactive 3-D computer graphics (“virtual reality”). His best-known book is The Mythical Man- Month: Essays in Software Engineering (1975, 1995); his latest is Blaauw and Brooks, Computer Architecture: Concepts and Evolution, (1997). Dr. Brooks has served on the National Science Board and the Defense Science Board. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a foreign member of the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK) and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His career work has been recognized by the Bower Science Award of the Franklin Institute, the John von Neumann Medal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineer and the Allen Newell and Distinguished Service awards of the Association for Computing Machinery. He became a Christian at age 31. He and Mrs. Brooks are faculty advisors for a graduate-student chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.  

    SIGGRAPH 1993

    Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., is Kenan Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He grew up in North Carolina, studied physics at Duke and computer science at Harvard under Howard Aiken. He joined IBM upon graduation and was one of the architects of the IBM Stretch and Harvest computers. From 1961-65 he was Corporate Project Manager for the System/360, including development of the System/360 computer family hardware, and the Operating System/360 software. For this work, he shared the National Medal of Technology with Bob Evans and Erich Bloch. He joined UNC in 1964, where he founded the Department of Computer Science and chaired it for its first 20 years. His research has been in computer architecture, software engineering, and interactive 3-D computer graphics. His best-known book is The Mithical Man-Month: Essays in Software Engineering. He was a founder of the Microelectronics Corporation of North Carolina, the North Carolina Educational Computing Service, and the Triangle Universities Computation Center.

    Dr. Brooks has served on the National Science Board and the Defense Science Board. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Art, and Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  

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