Frederick P. Brooks Jr., Computer Design Innovator, Dies at 91 - The New York Times

Frederick P. Brooks Jr., whose innovative enactment successful machine plan and bundle engineering helped signifier the tract of machine science, died connected Thursday astatine his location successful Chapel Hill, N.C. He was 91.

His decease was confirmed by his son, Roger, who said Dr. Brooks had been successful declining wellness since having a changeable 2 years ago.

Dr. Brooks had a wide-ranging vocation that included creating the machine subject section astatine the University of North Carolina and starring influential probe successful machine graphics and virtual reality.

But helium is champion known for being 1 of the method leaders of IBM’s 360 machine task successful the 1960s. At a clip erstwhile smaller rivals similar Burroughs, Univac and NCR were making inroads, it was a hugely ambitious undertaking. Fortune magazine, successful an nonfiction with the header “IBM’s $5,000,000,000 Gamble,” described it arsenic a “bet the company” venture.

Until the 360, each exemplary of machine had its ain bespoke hardware design. That required engineers to overhaul their bundle programs to tally connected each caller instrumentality that was introduced.

But IBM promised to destruct that costly, repetitive labour with an attack championed by Dr. Brooks, a young engineering prima astatine the company, and a fewer colleagues. In April 1964, IBM announced the 360 arsenic a household of six compatible computers. Programs written for 1 360 exemplary could tally connected the others, without the request to rewrite software, arsenic customers moved from smaller to larger computers.

The shared plan crossed respective machines was described successful a paper, written by Dr. Brooks and his colleagues Gene Amdahl and Gerrit Blaauw, titled “Architecture of the IBM System/360.”

“That was a breakthrough successful machine architecture that Fred Brooks led,” Richard Sites, a machine decorator who studied nether Dr. Brooks, said successful an interview.

But determination was a problem. The bundle needed to present connected the IBM committedness of compatibility crossed machines and the capableness to tally aggregate programs astatine erstwhile was not ready, arsenic it proved to beryllium a acold much daunting situation than anticipated. Operating strategy bundle is often described arsenic the bid and power strategy of a computer. The OS/360 was a forerunner of Microsoft’s Windows, Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.

At the clip IBM made the 360 announcement, Dr. Brooks was conscionable 33 and headed for academia. He had agreed to instrumentality to North Carolina, wherever helium grew up, and commencement a machine subject section astatine Chapel Hill. But Thomas Watson Jr., the president of IBM, asked him to enactment connected for different twelvemonth to tackle the company’s bundle troubles.

Dr. Brooks agreed, and yet the OS/360 problems were sorted out. The 360 task turned retired to beryllium an tremendous success, cementing the company’s dominance of the machine marketplace into the 1980s.

“Fred Brooks was a superb idiosyncratic who changed computing,” Arvind Krishna, IBM’s main enforcement and himself a machine scientist, said successful a statement. “We are indebted to him for his pioneering contributions to the industry.”

After founding the University of North Carolina's machine subject department, helium served arsenic its president for 20 years.

Dr. Brooks took the hard-earned lessons from grappling with the OS/360 bundle arsenic grist for his publication “The Mythical Man-Month: Essays connected Software Engineering.” First published successful 1975, it soon became recognized arsenic a quirky classic, selling briskly twelvemonth aft twelvemonth and routinely cited arsenic gospel by machine scientists.

The code is witty and self-deprecating, with pithy quotes from Shakespeare and Sophocles and section titles similar “Ten Pounds successful a Five-Pound Sack” and “Hatching a Catastrophe.” There are applicable tips on the way. For example: Organize engineers connected large bundle projects into tiny groups, which Dr. Brooks called “surgical teams.”

The astir good known of his principles was what helium called Brooks’s law: “Adding manpower to a precocious bundle task makes it later.” Dr. Brooks himself acknowledged that helium was “oversimplifying outrageously,” but helium was exaggerating to marque a point.

It is often smarter to rethink things, helium suggested, than to adhd much people. And successful bundle engineering, a assemblage with elements of artistry and creativity, workers are not interchangeable units of labor.

In the net era, immoderate bundle developers person suggested that Brooks’s instrumentality nary longer applies. Large open-source bundle projects — truthful named due to the fact that the underlying “source” codification is unfastened for each to spot — person armies of internet-connected engineers to spot flaws successful codification and urge fixes. Still, adjacent open-source projects are typically governed by a tiny radical of individuals, much surgical squad than the contented of the crowd.

Frederick Phillips Brooks Jr. was calved connected April 19, 1931, successful Durham, N.C., the eldest of 3 boys. His begetter was a physician, and his mother, Octavia (Broome) Brooks, was a homemaker.

Dr. Brooks grew up successful Greenville and majored successful physics astatine Duke University earlier going connected to postgraduate schoolhouse astatine Harvard. There were nary machine subject departments astatine the time, but computers were becoming probe tools successful physics, mathematics and engineering departments.

Dr. Brooks received his Ph.D. successful applied mathematics successful 1956; his advisor was Howard Aiken, a physicist and machine pioneer. He was a teaching adjunct for Kenneth Iverson, an aboriginal decorator of programming languages, who taught a people connected “automatic information processing.”

Industry arsenic good arsenic academia was progressively adopting computers. Dr. Brooks had summertime jobs astatine Marathon Oil and North American Aviation, and astatine Bell Labs and IBM.

He besides met his aboriginal wife, Nancy Greenwood, astatine Harvard, wherever she earned a master’s grade successful physics. They joined 2 days aft Harvard’s commencement ceremony. Then, Dr. Brooks recalled successful an oral past interview for the Computer History Museum, they took disconnected unneurotic to jobs astatine IBM.

During his IBM years, Dr. Brooks became what his lad described arsenic “a convinced and committed Christian” aft attending Bible survey sessions hosted by his workfellow and chap machine decorator Dr. Blaauw. “I came to spot that the intelligence difficulties I was having arsenic a idiosyncratic with Christianity were secondary,” Dr. Brooks recalled successful the Computer History Museum interview. He taught Sunday schoolhouse for implicit 50 years astatine a Methodist religion successful Chapel Hill and served arsenic a person and module advisor to Christian survey and fellowship groups astatine the university.

In summation to his lad Roger, Dr. Brooks is survived by his wife; his brother, John Brooks; 2 much children, Kenneth Brooks and Barbara La Dine; 9 grandchildren; and 2 great-grandchildren.

Dr. Brooks collected galore prizes for his achievements, including the National Medal of Technology and Innovation successful 1985 and the Turing Award, often called the Nobel of machine science, successful 1991.

The large prizes typically cited his enactment successful machine plan and bundle engineering. But during his years astatine North Carolina, Dr. Brooks besides turned to machine graphics and virtual reality, seeing it arsenic an emerging and important field. He led probe efforts that experts accidental included techniques for accelerated and realistic presumption of images and applications for studying molecules successful biology.

“The interaction of his enactment successful machine graphics was enormous,” said Patrick Hanrahan, a prof astatine Stanford University and a chap Turing Award winner. “Fred Brooks was a thought person mode up of his time.”

While his vocation spanned a scope of interests, determination was a communal theme, Henry Fuchs, a prof astatine the University of North Carolina and a longtime colleague, said successful an interview. Whether designing a caller household of computers utilized crossed the system oregon helping biologists research molecules to make caller drugs, Dr. Fuchs said, Dr. Brooks saw the relation of machine scientists arsenic “toolsmiths.”

“Fred’s view,” helium said, “was that machine scientists are chiefly instrumentality builders to assistance others bash their jobs better.”