March will mark the arrival of Women’s History Month, and on March 8th, International Women’s Day will also be observed. At theICEway, we have always been keen to celebrate our female friends and colleagues. With regards to the latter, we’re privileged to have worked with some of the brightest and best technological minds. In light of that and these impending occasions, here we look back at some of the most important women in tech history.
Ada Lovelace was born in London in 1815 and is known as an English mathematician and writer. Ada had written notes explaining how a specific engine could transition calculation to computation. As such, she has been referred to as the first programmer, and every second Tuesday in October is known as Ada Lovelace Day. On this day, the achievements of women in STEM careers is celebrated.
Grace Hopper was born in New York in 1906 and attended Yale University, ultimately receiving a PhD in mathematics. In 1943 she became a Naval Reserve and then joined the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp in 1949. It was here that she designed a compiler to translate programmer’s instructions into computer codes. Eight years later, in 1957, her division then developed the first English language data processing compiler. After retiring in 1986, Grace was subsequently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016 by Barack Obama.
Adele Goldberg was born in Ohio in 1945 and became a researcher at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC) in the 1970s. There, she was the only woman among the group who built the Smalltalk-80 together, a programming language that allowed for windows to overlap on display screens. Formally known as Graphical User Interface (GUI), Adele presented the system to Steve Jobs. Jobs then implemented many PARC ideas into his Apple products.
Radia Perlman was born in New Jersey in 1951 and learned programming for a physics class at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is perhaps best known for developing the TORTIS programming language, a child-friendly education language. TORTIS was installed into a turtle so that research could be conducted on young children. Radia then went on to invent the spanning tree algorithm and the spanning tree protocol. The former transformed ethernet from a single wire CSMA into a protocol capable of handling large clouds. As a result, she is known as the ‘mother of the internet’.
Elizabeth Feinler was born in West Virginia in 1931, and discovered a passion for data compilations whilst working towards a PhD in biochemistry. From 1972-1989, Elizabeth worked at the Stanford research institute as a director of the network information systems centre. The institute oversaw internet addresses and domains, and Elizabeth helped them transition to the domain name system by introducing the domain name protocol.
Back in 1987, the United States dedicated the month of March to celebrate women’s achievements and contributions to culture, society, and history. Will you be doing anything to mark this special occasion? If so then we would love to hear from you! For our part, this brief look back at some important women in tech history is but a small gesture. Nonetheless, it is one we are glad to have made. Hopefully it will inspire you to research some of the many others, too.
Further reading
- Read more about Women’s History Month 2024