Fernando José "Corby" Corbató (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.

Career

Corbató was born on July 1, 1926, in Oakland, California, to Hermenegildo Corbató, a Spanish literature professor from Villarreal, Spain, and Charlotte (Jensen) Corbató, a Danish American.

In 1943, Corbató enrolled at UCLA, but due to World War II he was recruited by the Navy during his first year. During the war, Corbató "debug[ged] an incredible array of equipment", inspiring his future career.

The first time-sharing system he was associated with was known as the MIT Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS), an early version of which was demonstrated in 1961. Corbató is credited with the first use of passwords to secure access to files on a large computer system, though he later claimed that this rudimentary security method had proliferated and became unmanageable.

The experience with developing CTSS led to a second project, Multics, which was adopted by General Electric for its high-end computer systems (later acquired by Honeywell). Multics pioneered many concepts now used in modern operating systems, including a hierarchical file system, ring-oriented security, access control lists, single-level store, dynamic linking, and extensive on-line reconfiguration for reliable service. 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; Unix also served as a direct model for many other subsequent operating system designs.

Awards

Among many awards, Corbató 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".

In 2012, he was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum "for his pioneering work on timesharing and the Multics operating system".

Legacy

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

Corbató is recognized as helping to create the first computer password.

Personal life and death

Corbató married programmer Isabel Blandford in 1962; she died in 1973.