Fred Brooks

American computer scientist (1931-2022); author of The Mythical Man-Month and 'No Silver Bullet' (1986), which distinguished essential from accidental complexity in software engineering · United States · On the map · Scientists · Died at 91

Frederick Phillips Brooks Jr. was an American computer architect, software engineer, and computer scientist, best known for managing development of IBM's System/360 family of mainframe computers and the OS/360 software support package, then later writing candidly about those experiences in his seminal book The Mythical Man-Month.

Fred Brooks is read about 90 times a day, in 38 languages.

A typical day, 30 days to 6 November 2026

The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 104 days, one point a day.

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2022Died17 November 20222005Turing TalkAward2004Eckert-Mauchly AwardAward1999Turing AwardAward1996Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in ScienceAward1994ACM FellowAwardACM-AAAI Allen Newell AwardAward1993IEEE John von Neumann MedalAward1991Honorary Doctor of ETH ZürichAward1989Harry H. Goode Memorial AwardAward1987ACM Distinguished Service AwardAward1985National Medal of Technology and InnovationAward1974Guggenheim FellowshipAward1970W. Wallace McDowell AwardAward1931Born19 April 1931

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