Frank Bunker Gilbreth (July 7, 1868 – June 14, 1924) was an American engineer, consultant, and author known as an early advocate of scientific management and a pioneer of time and motion study, and is perhaps best known as the father and central figure of Cheaper by the Dozen.

[1]: 75 After his father's death his mother moved the family to Andover, Massachusetts, to find better schools for her children.

He attended Boston's English High School, and his grades improved when he became interested in his science and math classes.

He took the entrance examinations for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but wanted his mother to be able to give up the boarding house.

[4] When after ten years the Whiddens were unwilling to make him a partner, he resigned to start his own company.

For the next fifteen years, "Frank B. Gilbreth, General Contractor" and two subsidiary companies would build some 100 large-scale projects across the United States (along with two in Canada), including full scale factories, paper mills, canals, dams and powerhouses.

The architects had specified that hundreds of 20-foot (6.1 m) hardened concrete piles (based on Gibreth's own patents for design and installation) were to be driven in to allow the soft ground to take the weight of two million bricks required to construct the building.

The building was also required to support efficient input and output of deliveries via its own railroad switching facilities.

Gilbreth discovered his vocation as efficiency expert while still a young construction worker, when he sought ways to make bricklaying faster and easier.

Together they studied the work habits of manufacturing and clerical employees in all sorts of industries to find ways to increase output and make their jobs easier.

In accordance with his wishes, his brain was donated to Harvard University, and his ashes were scattered in the Atlantic Ocean.

However, he was stricken with rheumatic fever and then pneumonia just weeks into his service, and spent four months in recovery before being discharged.

Gilbreth also devised the standard techniques used by armies around the world to teach recruits how to rapidly disassemble and reassemble their weapons even when blindfolded or in total darkness.

After Frank's death, Lillian Gilbreth took steps to heal the rift;[11] however, some friction remains over questions of history and intellectual property.

[14] The second, in 2003, starred comedians Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt,[15] and bears no resemblance to the book, except that it features a family with twelve children, and the wife's maiden name is Gilbreth.

[16] A 1952 sequel titled Belles on Their Toes chronicled the adventures of the Gilbreth family after Frank's 1924 death.

[14] The award for lifetime achievement by the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) is named in Frank and Lillian Gilbreth's honor.