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1999 A. M. Turing Award, Called "The Nobel Prize of Computing" Known For Work on Operating System/360 Software & Author of Defining Publication in Software Engineering Field, The Mythical Man-Month New York, NY, Jan. 5, 2000 ...The Association for Computing Machinery today announced the selection of Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., as the winner of the 1999 A.M. Turing Award, considered the Nobel Prize of Computing. Dr. Brooks was chosen for his landmark contributions to computer architecture, operating systems, and software engineering -- contributions that have stood the test of time and shaped the way we think about computing. Dr. Brooks, who coined the term Computer Architecture, was manager for the development of the IBM Corporation's System/360 family of computers and Operating System/360 software. He led the team that first achieved strict compatibility, upward and downward, in a computer family. Dr. Brooks was also an architect of the Stretch and Harvest computers during his tenure at IBM. With Dura Sweeney, Brooks invented a Stretch interrupt system that introduced most of the features of today's interrupt systems. Commenting on the award, Dr. Brooks said, "It is indeed a high honor to be associated with the distinguished computer scientists and great people who have won the Turing Award over the past three decades." Dr. Edward Lazowska, chair of the 1999 Turing Award Committee, said, "Fred Brooks has changed the face of computing: the way we think about computer architecture, the way we engineer software, and the way we use 3D interactive computer graphics to advance other fields. Beyond these extraordinary technical contributions, Fred is a true gentleman with enormous personal integrity, whose leadership has shaped our discipline in countless ways. I'm delighted that this long-overdue recognition occurred on my watch." Dr. Lazowska is also Chair of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, and Chair of the National Science Foundation Advisory Committee for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. Dr. Brooks' early concern for word processing led to his selection of the 8-bit byte, the decision to make the byte the addressable unit, and the inclusion of a full character set. All of these concepts are now universal practice. In 1997, Dr. Brooks co-authored, with G.A. Blaauw, Computer Architecture: Concepts and Evolution. The book documents and exemplifies the power of their 1960's innovation of thinking about computer design as separable domains: architecture, implementation and realization. Similarly, many of the technical innovations found in OS/360 -- such as the approach to I/O handling, and the method of transition between supervisor and user modes -- are foundations of today's operating systems. Even more influential, though, is the distillation of the successes and failures in the development of OS/360 that Dr. Brooks captured in his 1975 book, "The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering." Today, 25 years, two editions, and 300,000 copies later, this book remains a defining work in the field of software engineering. Dr. Brooks left IBM in 1965 to found the Computer Science Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There, his research on real-time, three-dimensional computer graphics has propelled that field forward, driven by the goal of creating tools that enable scientists and engineers to tackle problems formerly beyond their reach. Dr. Brooks and his students built the first molecular graphics system on which a new protein structure was solved. They also first proved that haptic displays augmenting visual displays can significantly improve a scientist's understanding of data. Brooks received his A.B. in physics from Duke University in 1953, and completed his Ph.D. in computer science in 1956, under Howard Aiken. ACM will present the award to Dr. Brooks during its annual awards ceremony on Saturday, May 6, 2000, at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel. The A.M. Turing Award is the latest ACM award for Dr. Brooks, who is an ACM Fellow. In 1994, he was the first recipient of the Allen Newell award. He also won the Distinguished Service award (DSA) in 1987.
The Association for Computing Machinery (www.acm.org) |
