Frederick Winslow TAYLOR

Frederick Taylor was an American engineer who created the specialty of industrial efficiency. He is considered the father of scientific management and the first management, or business, consultant. His ideas were revolutionary at the time but are now considered outdated by many industrial engineers. Taylor was born to a wealthy Philadelphia family and attended Phillips Exeter prep school in New Hampshire. Accepted to Harvard Law School, he never attended because of deteriorating vision. He later obtained a degree in mechanical engineering via correspondence courses, highly unusual for his era. He began his career in management consulting in the 1890s in Philadelphia. Business expert Peter Drucker wrote of him, "Frederick W. Taylor was the first man in recorded history who deemed work deserving of systematic observation and study." In 1906, Taylor was accorded an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of Pennsylvania and later became a professor at the Tuck Business School at Dartmouth. He was also President of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) from 1906-07. The term "scientific management" was coined by US Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis to describe Taylor's principles, and in 1911, Taylor published his life's work in the book The Principles of Scientific Management. His methods were often called "Taylorism" and are often disparaged today. Among his principles was the concept of doing time and motion studies – breaking down all work tasks into their component parts and measuring how long each took and how this be improved and made more efficient.

An avid golfer, Taylor was a lifelong member of the Philadelphia Country Club, but it is not known how he came to participate in the 1900 Olympic golf event. He actually was a better tennis player and played that sport when he was younger. In 1881 he and Clarence Clark won the US tennis doubles championship at Newport, Rhode Island, the first time a US champion was crowned in doubles tennis.