Douglas T. Ross

Douglas Taylor "Doug" Ross (21 December 1929 – 31 January 2007) was an American computer scientist pioneer, and Chairman of SofTech, Inc. He is most famous for originating the term CAD for computer-aided design, and is considered to be the father of Automatically Programmed Tools (APT) a language to drive numerically controlled manufacturing.

Ross was born in China, where his parents both worked as medical missionaries, and he grew up back in the States in Canandaigua, N.Y. He received a Bachelor of Science cum laude in mathematics from Oberlin College in 1951, and a Master of Science in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1954. Afterwards he started but didn't complete his PhD at MIT due to his pressing work as Head of the MIT's Computer Applications Group.

In the 1950s, he participated in the MIT Whirlwind (computer) project. In 1969, Ross founded SofTech, Inc., which started as an early supplier of Pascal compilers. Ross lectured at MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department and was chairman emeritus. He retired at Softech, having served as the company's president from 1969 to 1975, when he became Chairman of the Board of directors.

Among his many honors are the Joseph Marie Jacquard Memorial Award from the Numerical Control Society, in 1975, and the Distinguished Contributions Award from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers in 1980, and Honorary Engineer of the Year Award from the San Fernando Valley Engineer's Council, 1981. At MIT in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science they named the Douglas T. Ross Career Development Associate Professor of Software Development after him. The D.T.Ross Medal Award of the Berliner Kreis Scientific Forum for Product Development of the WiGeP Academic Society of Product Development Berliner Kreis & WGMK was named in his honor.

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