Frederick P. Brooks

Frederick P. Brooks (2007)

Frederick Phillips Brooks, Jr. (born April 19, 1931 in Durham , North Carolina , USA ) is an American computer scientist . Brooks became known first as the person responsible for the development of the OS / 360 at IBM and later for the honest description of the development process in his book The Mythical Man-Month ( German Vom Mythos des Mann -mont : Essays on Software Engineering ). This book also contains a much-cited statement known as Brooks' Law :

"Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later."

"The use of additional manpower for software projects that have already been delayed only delays them further."

- Frederick P. Brooks : The Mythical Man Month: Essays on Software Engineering, 25

Life

Brooks studied at Duke University in his native city and received his PhD in applied mathematics from Harvard University in 1956 under Howard Aiken as a PhD supervisor . He then found employment with IBM in Poughkeepsie and Yorktown , New York . He first worked on the architecture of the Stretch , a $ 10 million scientific supercomputer for the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory , then on the Harvest computer. He then led the development of the System / 360 family of computers and the OS / 360 operating system . The OS / 360 project ran from 1963 to 1966 with a scope of approximately 5000 person -years , which makes Brooks an expert at organizing large and extensive projects in a targeted manner.

In 1965 Brooks left IBM to build the computer science department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill . He headed it for more than 20 years. In 1996 Brooks received the Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science . In 1999 he received the Turing Award from the ACM computer science association . In 1970 he received the W. Wallace McDowell Award and in 2004 the Eckert-Mauchly Award . Since 1991 he has been a Foreign Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences . In 1976 he was admitted to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2001 to the National Academy of Sciences .

Works

with Kenneth E. Iverson Automatic Data Processing , New York: Wiley, 1963
with Kenneth E. Iverson Automatic Data Processing, System / 360 Edition , New York: Wiley, 1969
with Gerrit Blaauw Computer architecture: concepts and evolution , Addison-Wesley, 1997
No silver bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering (1987) (Retrieved April 14, 2014)
From the Myth of the Man Month : Essays on Software Engineering. - Bonn: mitp, 2003. - ISBN 3-8266-1355-4
Frederick P. Brooks: The Design of Design . Essays from a Computer Scientist. Ed .: Pearson Education, Inc. Addison-Wesley, 2010, ISBN 978-0-201-36298-5 (English, foreword & Chapter 6 [PDF; 6.3 MB ]).
Frederick P. Brooks: Successful Design . Essays on universal design processes with examples from IT and software development. mitp-Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-8266-9080-8 .

Web links

Commons : Fred Brooks - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Literature by and about Frederick P. Brooks in the catalog of the German National Library
Videos by and about Frederick P. Brooks in the AV Portal of the Technical Information Library
Fred Brooks website (English)

Individual evidence

↑ Frederick P. Brooks: On the Myth of the Man Month . Essays on software engineering. Addison-Wesley, Bonn 1987, ISBN 3-925118-09-8 (English: The Mythical Man Month: Essays on Software Engineering .).

personal data
SURNAME	Brooks, Frederick P.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Brooks Jr., Frederick Philipps
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American computer scientist
DATE OF BIRTH	April 19, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH	Durham , North Carolina , USA

[1] Frederick P. Brooks: On the Myth of the Man Month . Essays on software engineering. Addison-Wesley, Bonn 1987, ISBN 3-925118-09-8 (English: The Mythical Man Month: Essays on Software Engineering .).