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Gerrit Anne Blaauw (male, b. July 17, 1924, The Hague, Netherlands; Ph.D. Harvard, 1952) is best known as one of the principal designers of the groundbreaking IBM System/360 line of computers, together with Fred Brooks, Gene Amdahl, and others. In particular, Blaauw designed the revolutionary System/360 Model 67, arguably the first virtual memory system and the original basis for today's z/VM operating system.
In 1949, Blaauw won an exclusive scholarship funded by IBM CEO Thomas J. Watson. After an initial year at De la Fayette University in Pennsylvania, Blaauw studied at Harvard University with Howard Aiken, inventor of the early Mark I computer. Blaauw met Fred Brooks at Harvard.
After graduation Blaauw returned to The Netherlands. But in 1955 he came back to the United States to work at IBM's Poughkeepsie labs. Blaauw joined Brooks in 1959 to start work on the System/360, and IBM announced the new line in 1964. Soon after, Blaauw finally returned to The Netherlands and became a computer science professor. He retired in 1989 as professor emeritus with Twente University. In 1997 he co-authored a computer architecture book with Fred Brooks.
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