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Pioneer

Fernando Corbato

Software And Its Engineering

Fernando Corbato was an American computer scientist who pioneered time-sharing operating systems at MIT. He led development of the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS), demonstrated in 1961, and led the Multics development project at MIT Project MAC from its beginning in 1963 into the mid-1970s, work that influenced Unix and modern operating systems, including their hierarchical file systems. He is also credited with the first use of passwords to secure access to files on a shared computer system. He received the 1990 ACM Turing Award for organizing the concepts and leading the development of CTSS and Multics. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Birth Year
1926 1
Birth Date
1926-07-01 1
Death Year
2019 1
Death Date
2019-07-12 1
Nationality
American 1
Connections

Associated With

Multics, Systems

Led the Multics development project at MIT Project MAC from its beginning in 1963 into the mid-1970s; Multics was a joint MIT, Bell Labs and General Electric project rather than a single inventor's work.

Source Multicians.org: Corby

Invented

Multics, Systems

Fernando Corbato led the Multics project at MIT (Project MAC), the pioneering time-sharing operating system that directly influenced the design of Unix.

Source Wikipedia: Fernando J. Corbato
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Fernando J. Corbato
Wikimedia Foundation
  • Life and Career section
    Fernando Jose Corbato was born on July 1, 1926, in Oakland, California, to Hermenegildo Corbato, a Spanish literature professor from Villarreal, Spain, and Charlotte Corbato (nee Jensen), a Danish American.
  • Introduction
    Fernando Jose "Corby" Corbato (July 1, 1926 - July 12, 2019) was an American computer scientist, notable as a pioneer in the development of time-sharing operating systems. He won the 1990 ACM Turing Award.
  • Invented: Multics
View the Source
MIT News, Professor Emeritus Fernando Corbato, MIT computing pioneer, dies at 93
Article body, Turing Award paragraph
Quote, Article body, Turing Award paragraph
In 1990 Corbato was honored for his work with the Association of Computing Machinery's Turing Award, often described as "the Nobel Prize for computing."
View the Source
Multicians.org: Corby
Multicians.orgAssociated With: Multics, Leadership and Vision sectionView the Source
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