Women In Computing

In this sample storymap, we talk about some of the more important contributions women have made to computer science.

Time Sticky - Waiting for scroll...

December 10, 1815 — November 27, 1852
Ada Lovelace

Portrait by Alfred Edward Chalon



Women have been programming since before it was a thing. Take Ada Lovelace: Daughter of Lord Byron, she's often credited as the first computer programmer.
June 5, 1943
The First Computer





ENIAC(Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) was the first general-purpose , programmable , electronic digital computer , completed in 1945



Code named "Project PX" and funded by the United States Army, the first general-purpose computer was the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC). It was developed at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering.






















July 1943 — 1946
... And the women who made it work





Jean Bartik talks about the ENIAC women


The ENIAC programmers included a number of women: Jean Bartik, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer, Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum, Kay McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, Frances Spence, and Frances Elizabeth "Betty" Holberton. Despite their groundbreaking work, the Army never released the names of the women who worked on the ENIAC, and they were largely forgotten until Kathy Kleiman discovered their story in 1985.






















March 14, 1948
Edith Clarke: Bucking the Trend





Edith Clarke, first female professor of electrical engineering in the United States


There is no demand for women engineers, as such, as there are for women doctors; but there's always a demand for anyone who can do a good piece of work.






















1951
Rozsa Peter writes recursion





Rozsa Peter, born Rozsa Politzer, was a Hungarian mathematician and logician. She is best known as the "founding mother of recursion theory".



Hungarian-born Rozsa Peter studied number theory and poetry before becoming interested in the idea that would become recursion theory. She published her paper "Recursive Functions" in 1951, but it wasn't until the mid-50's that she began to apply her work to the realm of computers.






















1952
Grace Hopper invents the compiler





Grace Hopper: The Life Of A Coding Pioneer.



Rear Admiral Grace Hopper in 1985, at age 79. She’s been called “ the first lady of software .”


In her career with the Navy, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper worked on the first commercial computer (UNIVAC) and laid the groundwork for the programming language COBOL. But her most notable invention was the compiler, which can transform a source language into binary code. (In other words, it can translate the code you and I write into 0s and 1s.) She developed it in 1952, but she said "Nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic."






















1956 - 1962
Contributions to space exploration






NASA Documentary about Project Mercury astronauts, 1959 | NASA Archives



Evelyn Boyd Granville (May 1, 1924 – June 27, 2023) was the second African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University


One of the first African-American women to earn a Ph.D in mathematics, Evelyn Boyd Granville focused on aeronautics and space during her career. In 1956, she worked with NASA and IBM on Project Mercury, the first manned space flight. She worked with NASA again a few years later on the Apollo Project.






















1958
The First PhD in Computer Science






Mary Kenneth Keller, B.V.M. (December 17, 1913 – January 10, 1985) was an American Catholic religious sister, educator and pioneer in computer science. She was one of the first people, and the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in computer science in the United States



One of the first women (if not the first woman) to earn a Ph.D in computer science, Sister Mary Kenneth Keller also contributed to the development of the BASIC language during her time at Dartmouth College. She then founded the computer science department at Clarke College and directed it for the next 20 years.






















1972
Karen Sparck Jones makes search possible






Karen Sparck Jones Lectur


A professor at Cambridge Computer Laboratory, Sparck Jones was interested in natural language processing and information retrieval. In 1972, she introduced the concept of inverse document frequency, which most search engines still rely on.






















1985
"The Mother of the Internet"






Radia Perlman's acceptance speech at being inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame


Often called "the Mother of the Internet," Radia Perlman's work on spanning tree protocol enabled the development of modern networking. She holds more than 100 patents, which is what mothers do best.
























Source:

This story is based on Timeline Story of Northwestern University Knight Lab
https://timeline.knightlab.com/