Frederick P. Brooks Jr., whose progressive work in laptop design and software program engineering helped form the sphere of laptop science, died Nov. 17 at his house in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He was 91.

His loss of life was confirmed by his son, Roger, who mentioned Brooks had been in declining well being since having a stroke two years in the past.

Brooks had a wide-ranging profession that included creating the pc science division on the College of North Carolina and main influential analysis in laptop graphics and digital actuality.

However he’s finest identified for being one of many technical leaders of IBM’s 360 laptop venture within the Nineteen Sixties. At a time when smaller rivals like Burroughs, Univac and NCR had been making inroads, it was a vastly formidable enterprise. Fortune journal, in an article with the headline “IBM’s $5,000,000,000 Gamble,” described it as a “wager the corporate” enterprise.

Till the 360, every mannequin of laptop had its personal bespoke {hardware} design. That required engineers to overtake their software program applications to run on each new machine that was launched.

However IBM promised to eradicate that pricey, repetitive labor with an strategy championed by Brooks, a younger engineering star on the firm, and some colleagues. In April 1964, IBM introduced the 360 as a household of six suitable computer systems. Packages written for one 360 mannequin might run on the others, with out the necessity to rewrite software program, as prospects moved from smaller to bigger computer systems.

The shared design throughout a number of machines was described in a paper, written by Brooks and his colleagues Gene Amdahl and Gerrit Blaauw, titled “Structure of the IBM System/360.”

“That was a breakthrough in laptop structure that Fred Brooks led,” Richard Websites, a pc designer who studied underneath Brooks, mentioned in an interview.

However there was an issue. The software program wanted to ship on the IBM promise of compatibility throughout machines and the aptitude to run a number of applications directly was not prepared, because it proved to be a much more daunting problem than anticipated. Working system software program is usually described because the command and management system of a pc. The OS/360 was a forerunner of Microsoft’s Home windows, Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.

On the time IBM made the 360 announcement, Brooks was 33 and headed for academia. He had agreed to return to North Carolina, the place he grew up, and begin a pc science division at Chapel Hill. However Thomas Watson Jr., the president of IBM, requested him to remain on for one more yr to sort out the corporate’s software program troubles.

Brooks agreed, and finally the OS/360 issues had been sorted out. The 360 venture turned out to be an unlimited success, cementing the corporate’s dominance of the pc market into the Nineteen Eighties.

“Fred Brooks was an excellent scientist who modified computing,” Arvind Krishna, IBM’s CEO and himself a pc scientist, mentioned in a press release. “We’re indebted to him for his pioneering contributions to the business.”

After founding the College of North Carolina’s laptop science division, he served as its chair for 20 years.

Brooks took the hard-earned classes from grappling with the OS/360 software program as grist for his guide “The Legendary Man-Month: Essays on Software program Engineering.” First printed in 1975, it quickly turned acknowledged as a unusual basic, promoting briskly yr after yr and routinely cited as gospel by laptop scientists.

The tone is witty and self-deprecating, with pithy quotes from Shakespeare and Sophocles and chapter titles like “Ten Kilos in a 5-Pound Sack” and “Hatching a Disaster.” There are sensible ideas alongside the best way. For instance: Arrange engineers on massive software program initiatives into small teams, which Brooks referred to as “surgical groups.”

Probably the most well-known of his ideas was what he referred to as Brooks’ legislation: “Including manpower to a late software program venture makes it later.” Brooks himself acknowledged that he was “oversimplifying outrageously,” however he was exaggerating to make some extent.

It’s typically smarter to rethink issues, he urged, than so as to add extra folks. And in software program engineering, a career with parts of artistry and creativity, employees will not be interchangeable models of labor.

Within the web period, some software program builders have urged that Brooks’ legislation not applies. Giant open-source software program initiatives — so named as a result of the underlying “supply” code is open for all to see — have armies of internet-connected engineers to identify flaws in code and advocate fixes. Nonetheless, even open-source initiatives are usually ruled by a small group of people, extra surgical group than the knowledge of the gang.

Frederick Phillips Brooks Jr. was born April 19, 1931, in Durham, North Carolina, the eldest of three boys. His father was a doctor, and his mom, Octavia (Broome) Brooks, was a homemaker.

Brooks grew up in Greenville, North Carolina, and majored in physics at Duke College earlier than occurring to graduate college at Harvard. There have been no laptop science departments on the time, however computer systems had been turning into analysis instruments in physics, arithmetic and engineering departments.

Brooks obtained his doctorate in utilized arithmetic in 1956; his adviser was Howard Aiken, a physicist and laptop pioneer. He was a instructing assistant for Kenneth Iverson, an early designer of programming languages, who taught a course on “automated information processing.”

Business in addition to academia was more and more adopting computer systems. Brooks had summer time jobs at Marathon Oil and North American Aviation, and at Bell Labs and IBM.

He additionally met his future spouse, Nancy Greenwood, at Harvard, the place she earned a grasp’s diploma in physics. They married two days after Harvard’s graduation ceremony. Then, Brooks recalled in an oral historical past interview for the Pc Historical past Museum, they took off collectively to jobs at IBM.

Throughout his IBM years, Brooks turned what his son described as “a satisfied and dedicated Christian” after attending Bible research periods hosted by Blaauw, his colleague and fellow laptop designer. “I got here to see that the mental difficulties I used to be having as a scientist with Christianity had been secondary,” Brooks recalled within the Pc Historical past Museum interview. He taught Sunday college for greater than 50 years at a Methodist church in Chapel Hill and served as a frontrunner and college adviser to Christian research and fellowship teams on the college.

Along with his son Roger, Brooks is survived by his spouse; his brother, John Brooks; two extra youngsters, Kenneth Brooks and Barbara La Dine; 9 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Brooks collected many prizes for his achievements, together with the Nationwide Medal of Expertise and Innovation in 1985 and the Turing Award, typically referred to as the Nobel of laptop science, in 1999.

The most important prizes usually cited his work in laptop design and software program engineering. However throughout his years at North Carolina, Brooks additionally turned to laptop graphics and digital actuality, seeing it as an rising and vital area. He led analysis efforts that specialists say included methods for quick and life like presentation of photographs and purposes for finding out molecules in biology.

“The influence of his work in laptop graphics was huge,” mentioned Patrick Hanrahan, a professor at Stanford College and a fellow Turing Award winner. “Fred Brooks was a thought chief manner forward of his time.”

Whereas his profession spanned a variety of pursuits, there was a typical theme, Henry Fuchs, a professor on the College of North Carolina and a longtime colleague, mentioned in an interview. Whether or not designing a brand new household of computer systems used throughout the economic system or serving to biologists discover molecules to develop new medicine, Fuchs mentioned, Brooks noticed the function of laptop scientists as “toolsmiths.”

“Fred’s view,” he mentioned, “was that laptop scientists are primarily instrument builders to assist others do their jobs higher.”