Fernando J. Corbató

Fernando José "Corby" Corbató (born July 1, 1926 in Oakland, California) is a prominent American 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 sometimes known for "Corbató's Law" which states^[1]

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

Corbató has a wife, Emily. He has two daughters, Carolyn and Nancy Corbató by his late wife Isabel, and two step sons, David and Jason Gish.

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)

References

External links

• Oral history interview with Fernando J. Corbató at Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Corbató discusses computer science research, especially time-sharing, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
• Oral history interview with Fernando J. Corbató at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. Fernando Corbató reviews his early educational and naval experiences in the Eddy program during World War II, including the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS), Project MAC, and Multics.
• Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing, documentary ca. 1972 about the ARPANET. Includes footage of Fernando Corbató.
• 1964 TV episode of John Fitch, Science Reporter, featuring MIT's CTSS time-sharing system and an interview with MIT Professor Fernando J Corbato.