As a child, Nicole-Reine Lepaute, (5 January 1723 – 6 December 1788) stayed up all night reading every book in her family library. Nicole-Reine became a "human computer" who worked with Alexis-Claude Clairaut and Joseph-Jérôme Le Français de Lalande to predict the date of the return of Halley's Comet. They…
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Ada Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was the first person to publish an algorithm for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, the first modern computer. As a result, she is often regarded as the first computer programmer. What is an algorithm? An algorithm is a set of steps a…
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Alice Lee (1858-1939) was one of the first women to graduate from the University of London, receiving not one, but two degrees: a Bachelor of Science in 1884 and a Bachelor of Arts in 1885! In 1901 she received a PhD after she applied statistical methods to evolutionary biology. Alice…
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Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941) was an American astronomer who contributed greatly to the classification of stellar spectra. It is her system that is now used for current stellar classification. Due to scarlet fever, Annie was almost completely deaf. She s discovered more than 300 variable stars on photographic plates and…
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Edith Clarke (1883-1959 ), born in rural Maryland, was orphaned at an early age. She used her inheritance to enroll at Vassar at a time when few women earned a college degree. At Vassar she studied mathematics and astronomy and eventually worked as a "computing assistant" to George Campbell at…
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Clara Froelich (1892-1991) graduated with honors from Barnard College in 1915 and went to work in the mathematics division of Bell Telephone Laboratories. When she discovered that the mathematics division did not have its own machines, she spent evenings in the company's accounting office working on the tabulators typically used…
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As chief clerk for the Statistical Lab at Iowa State University Mary Clem (1905-1979) performed hundreds of thousands of mathematical calculations. She even created a new method, called “zero check,” to catch errors and save statisticians from becoming lost in a maze of math mistakes! Use your own calculation skills…
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Grace Hopper (1906-1992) joined the US Navy during WWII and worked on the Mark I computer at Harvard. She created on ground breaking technology and was known for her no nonsense style of teaching. She continued working in computers her entire life and even led the team that created COBOL,…
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Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000) born in Austria and made her way to America where she was a famous actress. At the beginning of WWII, Hedy along with composer George Antheli invented a radio guidance system for torpedoes. This technology, spread-spectrum techniques are incoproated into the Bluetooth technology we know today as…
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Betty Snyder Holberton (1917- 2001) was one of the six original programmers on the first electronic digital computer, the ENIAC during WWII. It was often joked that she was someone who "solved more problems in her sleep than other people did awake." She wrote one of the first SORT/MERGE systems…
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Joan Elisabeth Lowther Murray Clarke (1917-1996) was an English cyrptanalyst known for her work at Bletchley Park during WWII as a "code-breaker." "Code breakers" were those that worked on decoding a machine that the Germans invented called The Enigma Code that encrypted their messages. While the Germans beleived their machine…
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Katherine Johnson (1918-2020) was a brilliant American mathematician. Katherine co-authored 26 scientific papers. She worked on calculatiions of orbital mechanics at NASA and she was critical to the success of the first and subsequent US Crewed spaceflights. NASA noted her "historical role as one of the first African-American women to…
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Louise Pearsall (1920-2010) was one of the first enlisted class of the WAVES, which is the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service. She was a US Navy Cryptologic Mathematician during WWII.
Kay McNulty Mauchly (1021-2006) was born in Ireland. On the night of her birth, her father was arrested for participating in the Irish Republican Army. After he was released, the family immigrated to America. At this time Kay only spoke Gaelic. She received a scholarship to attend college and took…
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Kathleen Booth (1922) was born in Stourbridge, England. She is known for creating the assembly language and design of the assembler for the first Automatic Relay Computer (ARC) at Birkbeck college in London. At this time, she was part of one of the smallest British computer groups. After being credited…
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Marlyn Meltzer (1922 – 2008) was one of the first computer programmers in the world. Meltzer was one of the original programmers, along with Jean, Betty, Kay and Ruth Teitlebaum and Frances Spence, for the ENIAC computer.
Frances Spence (1922-2012), born in Philadelphia, was one of the original six programmers for the first electronic digital computer (the ENIAC). Six women--all amazing in math--worked as "human computers" on this ground breaking machine called ENIAC.She was also associated with the analog computing machine known as a Differntial Analyzer, which…
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Ruth Teitelbaum (1924–1986) was one of the first computer programmers in the world. Teitelbaum was one of the original programmers, along with Jean, Betty, Kay and Marlyn Meltzer and Frances Spence, for the ENIAC computer.
Jean Jennings Bartik (1924-2011) was born on a farm in Gentry County, Missouri. She "read voraciously as a child and longed to leave Missouri. She saw marriage as an impediment to her desire for adventure claiming, "Why would I want to get married I haven't been anywhere I haven't done…
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Joyce Aylard (1925) was evacuated from London at the beginning of WWII and eventually joined the Women's Royal Naval Service in 1943 where she was assigned to Eastcote. At Eastcote, she worked on breaking the Enigma code. Joyce said that it was top secret work and when she was finally…
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Adele Mildred Koss (1928-2012). Known as "Milly," she worked on the UNIVAC I with Grace Hopper at Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC). Accolades include the Grade Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing Award, given to her in 1997, and the Ada Lovelace Award, which was given to her in 2000. Milly…
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"Jake" Feinler, born Elizabeth Jocelyn Feinler (1931) grew up in Wheeling, West Virginia. After graduating with a degree in chemistry, she did graduate work at biochemistry at Purdue. She pioneered and managed the ARPANET, and then the Defense Data Network. A fun fact is that while she was a Director…
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Madam Hu Qiheng (b 1934) is a Chinese computer scientist that led the National Computing and Networking Facility of China team to bring the Internet to China's mainland. She was instrumental is allowing TCP/IP connection into China. Madam Hu was educated as an engineer in Moscow and then received a…
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Joyce Currie Little is a computer scientist and educator as well as an engineer. She taught computer science courses for over 30 years at San Diego State University, Goucher College, Community College of Baltimore and Towson University. She also developed programs to analyze data from models being tested in a…
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Margaret Hamilton (born August 17, 1936) is an American computer scientist, systems engineer and business owner. Between 1961 and 1963, she began to study software reliability while she was working at the US SAGE air defense system. She developed on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo space program as director of…
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Christine Darden, born September 10, 1942, began working for NASA's computing pool in 1967 having graduated from the Hampton Institute. Women were involved in the development of Whirlwind, including Judy Clapp. She created the prototype for an air defense system for Whirlwind which used radar input to track planes in…
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Susan Kare, born February 5, 1954, worked with Steve Jobs to design the original icons for the Macintosh. Kare designed the moving watch, paintbrush and trash can elements that made Macs user-friendly and changed the way we all use personal computers. She worked for Apple until the mid-1980s, going on…
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Shafrira "Shafi" Goldwasser, born in 1958, is an American-Israeli computer scientist and winner of the Turing Award in 2012. She is the RSA Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, a professor of mathematical sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, co-founder and chief scientist of Duality…
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Diane Kelly studies the design and use of computer technology, specifically the interfaces between people and computers. She graduated from Rutgers University and the University of Alabama and was the recipient of the Karen Sparck-Jones Award in 2012. She said "My slogan is: 'Computing is too important to be left…
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Jaime Teevan (1976) graduated Computer Science from Yale University and received her Ph.D. and S.M. from MIT. She is the Chief Scientist for Microsoft's Experiences and Devices where she is known for her research in human-computer interaction and information retrieval. Jaime is also known for her work on "microproductivity" which…
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In 1985, Janet Walker developed the Symbolics Document Examiner, a system which implements hypertext. Without Janet Walker-- no bookmarks on the internet!