Fernando J. Corbató

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Fernando José Corbató (born July 1, 1926 in Oakland, California) is a prominent computer scientist, notable as a pioneer in the development of time-sharing operating systems.

Amongst many awards, he received the Turing Award in 1990, "for his pioneering work in organizing the concepts and leading the development of the general-purpose, large-scale, time-sharing and resource-sharing computer systems".

The first timesharing system he was associated with was known as the MIT Compatible Time-Sharing System, an early version of which was demonstrated in 1961. The experience gained led to a second project, Multics, which was adopted by Honeywell. Multics, while not particularly commercially successful in itself, directly inspired Ken Thompson to develop Unix, the direct descendants of which are still in extremely wide use; it also served as a model for every other subsequent operating system design.

Born in Oakland, California, Corbató received a bachelor's degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1950, and then a Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1956. He joined MIT's Computation Center immediately upon graduation, became a professor in 1965, and stayed at MIT until he retired.

Corbató is known for "Corbató's Law" which states

The number of lines of code a programmer can write in a fixed period of time is the same independent of the language used.

Known as "Corby" to all of his associates, he is married and has 2 daughters, Nancy and Carolyn.

[edit] Further reading

• F. J. Corbató, M. M. Daggett, R. C. Daley, An Experimental Time-Sharing System (IFIPS 1962) in a good description of CTSS
• F. J. Corbató (editor), The Compatible Time-Sharing System: A Programmer's Guide (M.I.T. Press, 1963)
• F. J. Corbató, V. A. Vyssotsky, Introduction and Overview of the Multics System (AFIPS 1965) is a good introduction to Multics
• F. J. Corbató, PL/I As a Tool for System Programming (Datamation, May 6 1969)
• F. J. Corbató, C. T. Clingen, J. H. Saltzer, Multics -- The First Seven Years (AFIPS, 1972) is an excellent review, after a considerable period of use and improvement
• F. J. Corbató, C. T. Clingen, A Managerial View of the Multics System Development (Conference on Research Directions in Software Technology, Providence, Rhode Island, 1977) is a fascinating look at what it was like to manage such a large software project
• F. J. Corbató, On Building Systems That Will Fail (Turing Award Lecture, 1991)

[edit] External links

• Longer biography at MIT
• Oral history interview by Arthur L. Norberg for the Charles Babbage Institute
• Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing, documentray ca. 1972 about the ARPANET. Includes footage of Fernando Corbató.