Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Ada Lovelace Day

It is Ada Lovelace Day an international day celebrating the achievements of women in technology and science.

Ada Lovelace

Wikipeadia's Ada Lovelace page will tell you all you need to know.  She is the world's first programmer and that makes her the earliest adopter of the Information Age and geek of the highest order.

On the off chance you imagine Ada Lovelace's contribution is an isolated instance of the fairer gender's impact on Computer Science and Programming below is list of some other ladies Rocking Out (source).

Out of the list, Grace Hopper is my personal hero. Go Navy!  She is responsible connections style for my software development career.  Dad went from WWII Airforce radio man to job with IBM, to programming missile tracking systems, to programming Marine payroll in COBOL (a language the use esp within Navy/Marines Rear Admiral Hopper pushed for).  Sometime in there I was born and dad got microcomputer to use for work at home / fun and let me "play" on it. 

By anonymous request Jeri Ellsworth -- She is best known for, in 2004, creating a Commodore 64 emulator within a joystick, called Commodore 30-in-1 Direct to TV. The "computer in a joystick" could run 30 video games from the early 1980s.  Just to prove not all are "stuffy" academic/researcher type. 


Allen, Fran

Antonelli, Kathleen (Kay) McNulty Mauchly

Bartik, Jean Jennings

Borg, Anita

Burks, Alice


Chen, Marina C.

Clarke, Edith


Davis, Ruth

Dayhoff, Ruth


ENIAC Women

Estrin, Thelma

Forsythe, Alexandra

Fox, Margaret R.

Goldberg, Adele

Goldstine, Adele

Goldwasser, Shafi

Granville, Evelyn Boyd

Griswold, Madge


Haibt, Lois

Hamilton, Margaret

Hayes-Roth, Barbara

Holberton, Frances Snyder (Betty)

Hoover, Erna Schneider

Hopper, Grace Murray

Jensen, Kathleen


Keller, Sister Mary Kenneth

Liskov, Barbara

Mahowald, Misha

Meltzer, Marlyn Wescoff

Noether, Emmy

Owicki, Susan

Pearl, Amy

Peter, Rosa

Polese, Kim
 
Ryder, Barbara G.

Sammet, Jean E.

Seneff, Stephanie

Spence, Frances Bilas

Srinivasan, Srinija

Teitelbaum, Ruth Lichterman

Winters, Joan Margaret

Wohl, Amy
  • President and Founder of Wohl Associates consulting firm.
  • Pioneered office automation and ergonomics
  • http://www.wohl.com

Zimmerman, Joan

4 comments:

  1. An impressive list--and a helpful contribution to Ada Day.

    ReplyDelete
  2. What? No Jeri Ellsworth?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Grace Hopper was someone else I would consider a geek of the highest order. Not only into programming, she also instituted the geek tradition of instigating bad puns and/or pop culture references into programming lingo. She invented "debugging" as the legend goes (which I believe is actually a real account)

    ReplyDelete