Tércio Pacitti

Tércio Pacitti (September 9, 1928 to June 18, 2014) was a Brazilian electronic engineer and computer scientist born in Atibaia, São Paulo, who led the introduction of information technology across several of the country's institutions. Graduating first in his class as an aeronautical engineer from the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica, known as ITA, in 1952, he earned a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971 under Otto J. M. Smith, and served as ITA's rector from 1982 to 1984, where he established its Computer Engineering program. He also led information technology development at COPPE-UFRJ and UNIRIO, served as a Major-Brigadier engineer heading the Brazilian Air Force's Directorate of Engineering from 1986 to 1987, and wrote the textbook Fortran Monitor, which sold 250,000 copies in Brazil between 1967 and 1987; he was posthumously named Patron of Information Technology of Aeronautics in 2019.