Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

Kenan Professor
Department of Computer Science
Brooks Computer Science Building, CB #3175
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175 USA

brooks@cs.unc.edu

(919) 962-1931 Tel
(919) 942-2529 Home

Dr. Brooks passed away on November 17, 2022, at the age of 91, surrounded by family. The UNC Department of Computer Science will celebrate his life and career with a memorial event in Chapel Hill in the spring of 2023. For more information, please see the page linked below.

Memorial Event Information

Statement from the Dept. of Computer Science



Research Interests

The Process of Design

Virtual Environments
EVE

Human-Computer Interaction

3D Interactive Computer Graphics

Scientific Visualization

Quick Links

The Design of Design Supplementary Material

COMP 590-009: A Personal History of Computing

COMP 915: Technical Communication in Computer Science

COMP 916: Professional Practice in Computer Science

Biography and Curriculum Vitae

My Ph.D. Students

Applying to our Graduate School

My Schedule

What Matters Most

 


Selected Publications

Books

Brooks, Jr., F.P. The Design of Design: Essays from a Computer Scientist. New York: Addison-Wesley, 2010, 400 pages.

Blaauw, G.A., F.P. Brooks, Jr. Computer Architecture: Concepts and Evolution. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997, 1213 pages.

Brooks, Jr., F.P. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, 20th Anniversary Edition. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995, 322 pages.

Brooks, Jr., F.P., K.E. Iverson. Automatic Data Processing, System/360 Edition. New York: Wiley, 1963.

Papers

Burns, E., S. Razzaque, A.T. Panter, M. C. Whitton, M. R. McCallus, F. P. Brooks, Jr. 2006: "The Hand Is More Easily Fooled than the Eye: Users Are More Sensitive to Visual Interpenetration than to Visual-Proprioceptive Discrepancy," Journal on Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 15, 1: 1-15, February 2006.

Meehan, Michael, S. Razzaque, B. Insko, M. Whitton, F. P. Brooks 2005: "Review of Four Studies on the Use of Physiological Reaction as a Measure of Presence in Stressful Virtual Environments," Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback, 30, 3: 239-258, September 2005.

Whitton, M., Cohn, J., Feasel, J., Zimmons, P., Razzaque, S., Poulton, S., McLeod, B., Brooks, F. 2005:
"Comparing VE Locomotion Interfaces," in Proceedings of IEEE Virtual Reality 2005, (Bonn, Germany, March 2005), 123-130, IEEE Computer Society.

Burns, E., Razzaque, S., Panter, A. T., Whitton, M. C., McCallus, M. R., & Brooks, F. P. 2005: "The Hand is Slower than the Eye: A quantitative exploration of visual dominance over proprioception," Proceedings of IEEE Virtual Reality 2005, (Bonn, Germany, March 2005), 3-10, IEEE Computer Society.

Brooks, Jr., F.P. 2004: "On Computer Architecture," 2004 Eckert-Mauchly Award Acceptance Speech at 31st Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture (Munich, Germany, June 22).

Lok, Benjamin, Samir Naik, Mary Whitton, and Frederick Brooks 2004: "Experiences in Extemporaneous Incorporation of Real Objects in Immersive Virtual Environments," Beyond Glove and Wand Based Interaction Workshop Manual, 107-110, IEEE Virtual Reality 2004, Chicago, IL.

Lok, Benjamin, Samir Naik, Mary Whitton, and Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. 2004: "Effects of Handling Real Objects and Avatar Fidelity on Cognitive Task Performance and Sense of Presence in Virtual Environments," Journal on Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 12, 6: 615-628.

Lok, B., F.P. Brooks, Jr., S. Naik, M.C. Whitton 2003: "Effects of Handling Real Objects and Self-Avatar Fidelity on Cognitive Task Performance in Virtual Environments," Proceedings of IEEE Virtual Reality 2003 (Los Angeles, CA, March 22-26, 2003), 125-132, IEEE Computer Society.

Meehan, M., S. Razzaque, M.C. Whitton, F.P. Brooks, Jr. 2003: "Effect of Latency on Presence in Stressful Environments," Proceedings of IEEE Virtual Reality 2003 (Los Angeles, CA, March 22-26, 2003), 141-148, IEEE Computer Society.

Brooks, Jr., F.P. 2003: "Three Great Challenges for Half-Century-Old Computer Science." Journal of the ACM, 50, 1: 25-26.

Brooks, Jr., F.P. 2002: "Studies in Virtual Environments." Keynote address for the Fifth Presence Workshop (Porto, Portugal, October 9-11).

Brooks, Jr., F.P. 2002: "STRETCH-ing Is Great Exercise: It Gets You in Shape to Win." Keynote address at STRETCH Development Reunion (Poughkeepsie, New York, September 28), Annals of the History of Computing. To appear.

Meehan, M., B. Insko, M.C. Whitton, F.P. Brooks Jr., 2002: "Physiological Measures of Presence in Stressful Virtual Environments," ACM Transactions on Graphics, 21, 3: 645-652. (Proc. of ACM SIGGRAPH 2002, San Antonio, TX).

Brooks, Jr., F.P. 2001: "The History of IBM Operating System/360," Proceedings of SD&M Computer Pioneers Conference, Bonn, Germany.

Brooks, Jr., F.P. 2000: "The Design of Design," Turing Award address at SIGGRAPH ‘00, (July 2000). Communications of the ACM. To appear.

Brooks, Jr., F.P. 1999: "What’s Real About Virtual Reality?" IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 19, 6: 16-27.
Note: Copyright 1999 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes, or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.

Miné, Mark R., F.P. Brooks, Jr., C.H. Sequin 1997: "Moving Cows in Space: Exploiting Proprioception as a Framework for Virtual Environment Interaction," Computer Graphics, Proceedings Annual Conference Series, ACM SIGGRAPH, Los Angeles, CA, 19-26.

Cohen, Jonathan, A. Varshney, D. Manocha, G. Turk, H. Weber, P. Agarwal, F.P. Brooks, Jr., W. Wright 1996: "Simplification Envelopes," Computer Graphics, Proceedings Annual Conference Series, ACM SIGGRAPH, New Orleans, LA, 119-128.

Brooks, Jr. F.P. 1996: "Language Design as Design," in T.J. Bergin and R.G. Gibson, eds, History of Programming Languages II. New York and Reading, MA: ACM Press and Addison-Wesley, 4-16.

Brooks, Jr., F.P. 1996: "The Computer Scientist as Toolsmith II." Keynote/Newell Award address at SIGGRAPH '94, (Orlando, FL, July 1994). Communications of the ACM, March 1996, 39, 3: 61-68. Also Computer Graphics (Proc. of SIGGRAPH ’94), 28, 4 (November 1994): 281-287. (Also available from the ACM Digital Library.)

Brooks, Jr., F.P. and I.E. Sutherland, co-chairs, E. Bloch, D. Estrin, J. Hennessy, B.W. Lampson, E.D. Lazowska, W.A. Lester, J. Preston, W. Sincoskie, L. Smarr, J.F. Traub. Evolving the High Performance Computing and Communications Initiative to Support the Nation’s Information Infrastructure. Washington: National Academy, 1995, 119 pages.

Brooks, Jr., F.P., 1994: "Is There Any Real Virtue in Virtual Reality?" Public lecture co-sponsored by the Royal Academy of Engineering and the British Computer Society, November 30, London.

Varshney, A., F.P. Brooks, Jr., W.V. Wright, 1994: "Computing Smooth Molecular Surfaces," IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 14, 5 (September 1994): 19-25.

Taylor II, R.M., W. Robinett, V.L. Chi, F.P. Brooks, Jr., W.V. Wright, R.S. Williams, E.J. Snyder 1993: "The Nanomanipulator: A Virtual-Reality Interface for a Scanning Tunneling Microscope," Computer Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 93), August 1993: 127-134.

Airey, J., J. Rohlf, F.P. Brooks, Jr. 1990: "Towards Image Realism with Interactive Update Rates in Complex Virtual Building Environments," Computer Graphics, Proceedings of 1990 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics, 24, 2: 41-50, Snowbird, UT, March 1990. (Best paper award)

Brooks, Jr., F.P. 1988: "Grasping Reality Through Illusion—Interactive Graphics Serving Science." Invited keynote address at Conferance on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Washington, D.C., May 17. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, May 1-11. E. Solloway, D. Frye, and S. Sheppard, eds. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1988.

Brooks, Jr., F.P., chm., V. Basili, B. Boehm, E. Bond, N. Eastman, D.L. Evans, A.K. Jones, M. Shaw, C.A. Zraket. Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Military Software. Washington: Dept. of Defense, September 1987, 78 pages.

Brooks, Jr., F.P. 1986: "No Silver Bullet—Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering," Information Processing 86. H.J. Kugler, ed. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North Holland): 1069-1076. (Invited paper, International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) Congress '86, Dublin, Ireland, September 1986.) Reprinted in Computer, 20, 4 (April 1987) 10-19. Also reprinted in The Mythical Man-Month, Anniversary Edition, Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., Addison-Wesley, 1995.

Brooks, Jr., F.P. 1977: "The Computer 'Scientist' as Toolsmith: Studies in Interactive Computer Graphics," Information Processing '77. B. Gilchrist, ed. North-Holland Pub. Co., Amsterdam: 625-634. (Invited paper, International Federation of Information Processing Congress '77, Toronto, Canada, August 1977.)


Major Honors and Awards

National Medal of Technology (1985)
A.M. Turing Award, Association for Computing Machinery (1999)
Bower Award and Prize in Science, Franklin Institute (1995)
Eckert-Mauchly Award, Association for Computing Machinery and The Institute
of Electrical and Electronics Engineers–Computer Society (2004)
Allen Newell Award, Association for Computing Machinery (1994)
John von Neumann Medal, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (1993)
Harry Goode Memorial Award, American Federation of Information Processing Societies (1989)
McDowell Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Computer Art, IEEE Computer Group (1970)
Distinguished Service Award, Association for Computing Machinery (1987)
Honorary Doctor of Technical Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich (1991)
Distinguished Fellow, British Computer Society (1994)
Foreign Member, Royal Academy of Engineering, U.K. (1994)
Foreign Member, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (1991)
Member, National Academy of Science (2001)
Member, National Academy of Engineering (1976)
Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1976)
Guggenheim Fellowship for studies on computer architecture and human factors
of computer systems, Cambridge University, England (1975)
Computer Pioneer Award, IEEE Computer Society (1982)
Fellow (initial inductee), Association for Computer Machinery (1994)
Fellow, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (1968)
Fellow Award, The Computer Museum History Center (2001)
Thomas Jefferson Award, UNC-Chapel Hill (1986)
Order of the Golden Fleece, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Computer Sciences Distinguished Information Services Award, Information Technology
Professionals (1970)
National Science Board (1987-1992)
Defense Science Board (1983-86)
Chairman, Military Software Task Force (1985-87)
Member, Computers in Simulation and Training Task Force (1986-87)
Member, Artificial Intelligence Task Force (1983-84)
CyberEdge Journal Annual Sutherland Award (April, 1997)

Funding Agencies

National Institutes of Health - National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering
Computer Integrated Systems for Microscopy & Manipulation

National Science Foundation

Preparation of Two Books on the Science of Design
 
Office of Naval Research
VE Technologies for Effective Training


Biography and Curriculum Vitae (PDF)


Ph.D. Students (PDF)


Information and Advice for Application to our Graduate School (PDF)


Last Updated: April 19, 2007