To my knowledge it is not Matt Cutts, he just provides valuable ideas for SEO and other marketing strategies (unfortunately very few follow him though most at least view his videos). SEO has no father, but SEOs surely do.
I think no one is father of SEO.
Its not an invention, SEO has some group of techniques to make your website frequently presence in search engines results list.
Its not a new thing.
Whatever the SEO's does maximum things are already have previously.