Frederick Phillips Brooks

Professor Frederick Phillips Brooks, Jr. was the Kenan Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1964 he founded the Computer Science Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and chaired it for 20 years. His team researched methods of measuring and enhancing the presence illusion, and worked on scientific visualization and education and training applications, rather than entertainment. From 1956, Brooks's research interests were first, computer architecture, then software engineering, and since 1965, computer graphics generally, originally molecular graphics. His later interests included virtual reality. Brooks served on the National Science Board and the Defense Science Board. He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the ACM A.M. Turing Award, the IEEE John von Neumann Medal, the IEEE Computer Society’s McDowell and Computer Pioneer Awards, the ACM Allen Newell and Distinguished Service Awards, the AFIPS Harry Goode Award, the Eckert-Mauchly Award, and an honorary Doctor of Technical Science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH-Zürich).