Robert Piloty

Robert Piloty (6 June 1924, in Munich – 21 January 2013) was a German computer scientist and former Professor of Communications Processing at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Technische Universität Darmstadt. He was one of the pioneers in the construction of program-controlled computer systems and the founding father of computer science courses in Germany. As a member of the advisory board and chairman of the commission for the introduction of computer science studies in Germany, he was significantly involved in the introduction and design of computer science studies throughout Germany. His efforts also led to the establishment of the first computer science course at TU Darmstadt.

Piloty was a founding member of the Gesellschaft für Informatik. As a member of the general assembly and vice president of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), Piloty had represented German computer science internationally for many years. Inspired by a study visit to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he visited the Whirlwind I, the Program-Controlled Electronic Calculator Munich (PERM) was created by his initiative and under his technical direction from 1949 at the Technical University of Munich. The PERM project under the overall direction of his father Hans Piloty and his mathematician colleague Robert Sauer established the necessary hardware and software basis for many further research projects in the then emerging field of computer science. The PERM was used for many years in the computer center of the Technical University of Munich and in the training of development engineers for the German computer industry. Today it can be seen in the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

At TU Darmstadt Piloty worked with Winfried Oppelt on a study plan "Computer Science", which was characterized by engineering science. There was already another curriculum, which came from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics and provided for a stronger emphasis on software engineering. However, the Faculty of Electrical Engineering was the driving force, which is why in the same year (1968) a computer science course was established at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering on the basis of Pilotys and Oppelts study regulations. 1993 Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts 1997 IEEE Fellow