Farewell to a Researcher, Teacher, and Mentor
Visitors to the Department of Computer Science will see a slide that is perpetually rotating through the digital displays in the Sitterson Hall and Brooks Building lobbies. It says:
“The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.”
Though this quote by Dr. Fred Brooks was written to reflect the process by which a programmer uses code to build a tool with broad and effective utility, building a castle from air is not too different from what he accomplished when he had the ambitious vision to establish one of the nation’s first academic departments focusing on the discipline of computer science—a discipline which at that time had not even settled on the name “computer science”!
Brooks retired in June 2015, 51 years after the Department’s founding, and what was once a fledgling department with offices strewn across six different buildings on campus looks quite different today. The truth, however, is that the differences are superficial. The tenets established by Brooks during the founding of the department remain its pillars today. The Department remains a faculty of teachers and researchers who look outside of computer science in search of ways to improve the lives and experiences of others. The Department is frequently described using words like “collaborative” and “collegial,” and the ideas of an undergraduate student are treated with the same respect as those of a Turing Award winner.
Brooks chaired the Department of Computer Science for the first 20 years of its existence. He has advised at least 40 doctoral dissertations. He has received dozens of awards and founded multiple centers, but the lives he has enriched will be his legacy.
The moniker FREDERICK P. BROOKS JR. COMPUTER SCIENCE BUILDING will remain above the porticoes and planters of the Department’s home as a lasting testament of Dr. Brook’s service to the University and of the impact that he has had on our Department--an impact which cannot be equaled. Undoubtedly more important to Brooks, however, is the impact that he has had on the lives of the students, faculty, and staff with whom he has worked over the last 50 years. He may have retired from the Department, but he will forever be part of the UNC Computer Science family. Indeed, as Dr. Brooks himself has said many times of his pending retirement, he’s just going off the payroll.
Thank you very much, Dr. Brooks, and enjoy your retirement!