Bert Sutherland

William Robert Sutherland, known as Bert Sutherland, was an American computer scientist (May 10, 1936 to February 18, 2020) who was the longtime manager of three prominent research laboratories: Sun Microsystems Laboratories, the Systems Science Laboratory at Xerox PARC from 1975 to 1981, and the Computer Science Division of Bolt, Beranek and Newman, which helped develop the ARPANET. The English Wikipedia article dates his management of Sun Microsystems Laboratories from 1992 to 1998, while the Computer History Museum profile says he retired from Sun Microsystems in 2000 after nearly a decade as Director of Sun Labs. In these roles he participated in creating the personal computer, advanced microprocessor technology, two programming languages (Smalltalk and Java), and the internet. Unlike traditional corporate research managers, he added individuals from fields like psychology, cognitive science and anthropology to enhance his technology staff, and directed his scientists to take research such as the Xerox Alto personal computer outside the laboratory so people could use it and be observed interacting with it. He also fostered a collaboration between his brother Ivan Sutherland and Carver Mead on methods of very-large-scale integration for integrated circuits, together with PARC staff member Lynn Conway, work that produced an influential textbook and university syllabus.