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 programming language to drive numerical control in manufacturing.

Ross also made foundational contributions to data structures and systems modeling. Beginning in the late 1950s, he developed Plex, an early record-like data structure featuring linkage members and subroutines that influenced Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad and early concepts of abstract data types. He later invented the Structured Analysis and Design Technique (SADT), which became the basis for the IDEF0 modeling standard. In his later years, Ross expanded his work on Plex from a technical data model into a broader pseudophilosophy of problem-solving.