Harlan B. Mills

Pioneer in automata theory and structured programming, Mills transformed software development through his advocacy of mathematical and statistical principles in software engineering. In 1969, Mills was asked to write a program creating an information database for the New York Times, a project that was estimated to require 30 person-years with traditional programming techniques. Using structured programming techniques, Mills single-handedly completed the project in six months.

Dr. Mills was an IBM Fellow and Member of the Corporate Technical Committee at IBM, a Technical Staff Member at GE and RCA, and President of Mathematica and Software Engineering Technology. At GE, he developed a three-month curriculum in management science attended by hundreds of GE executives. At IBM, Mills was the primary architect of the IBM Software Engineering Institute, where thousands of IBM software personnel were trained in the mathematical foundations of software.

He later embodied the mathematical and statistical principles for software in the Cleanroom software engineering process. As founder of Software Engineering Technology, Mills created an enterprise for Cleanroom technology transfer. The methods of structured programming are used throughout this text.