Eberhard Rechtin

systems architecting.

Rechtin spent his early career at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, leading deep-space tracking and communications work, before serving as DARPA director and later a professor at the University of Southern California. He is credited with establishing systems architecting as a formal discipline, distinct from systems engineering. His books, notably 'Systems Architecting' and 'The Art of Systems Architecting' (with Mark Maier), introduced the use of heuristics as a practical design tool.