Grace Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906- January 1, 1992)
“If it’s a good idea, go ahead and do it. It’s much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.”
Grace Hopper was a computer scientist and a United States Navy Rear Admiral. She was one of the first programmers in the history of computers. Programmers that are familiar with if then statements can thank Grace Hopper for her influence. Some of her most notably awards and honors include the first winner of “Computer Science Man of the Year” and was the first woman to receive the National Medal of Technology.
Anita Borg (January 17, 1949- April 6, 2003)
“If we want technology to serve society rather than enslave it, we have to build systems accessible to all people – be they male or female, young, old, disabled, computer wizards or technophobes.”Anita Borg was a computer scientist who founded the Institute for Women and Technology and the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Borg received a Ph.D. in computer science, and then built a fault tolerant Unix-based operation system. Later in her career, she developed and patented a method for generating address traces for analyzing and designing high-speed memory systems. Her aims in technology were to better our world, economically, socially, and personally. In her name, there is The Google Anita Borg Memory Scholarship to encourage women in computing and technology.
Margaret Hamilton (August 17, 1936)
On software engineering: “When I first started using this phrase, it was considered to be quite amusing. It was an ongoing joke for a long time. They liked to kid me about my radical ideas. Software eventually and necessarily gained the same respect as any other discipline.”
Hamilton’s career happened during a time when technology and engineering was overwhelmingly male. In 1968, over 400 people were working on the software for Apollo to send our men to the moon. Hamilton and her team were able to prevent aborting the mission to landing on the moon. The software that her and her team created was able to recognize the error in a checklist manual. Not only was the program able to recognize errors, but it also had recovery programs to eliminate lower priority tasks and replace them with more important ones. Hamilton was the pioneer of software engineering, which as we know today, has been an integral part of almost every human interaction since. Software engineering did not have nearly as much respect as it does today, especially compared to hardware engineering.
Katherine Johnson (August 26, 1918)
“Math. It’s just there… You’re either right or you’re wrong. That’s what I like about it.”
Katherine Johnson is an African American physicist, space scientist, and mathematician who was a pioneer in American space history. Her computations have had influence on every major space program, including the flight path for the first American mission space. She enrolled in college at the age of 15 and was the third African American to get a PhD. in mathematics. Johnson broke both race and gender barriers at NASA and for much of STEM as she was the first woman and person of color to perform calculations for NASA. Without Johnson, America probably wouldn’t have been able to win the race to space.
Edith Clarke (February 10, 1883-October 29, 1959) “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.”
Edith Clarke was the first female electrical engineer as well as the first female professor of electrical engineering the University of Texas at Austin. Clarke earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and astronomy from Vassar College and later enrolled at MIT where she was the first women to receive a degree from the electrical engineering department. She worked as an engineer for General Electric and received a patent for her “graphical calculator” that was used to solve electric power transmission line problems. She wrote a paper on “steady-state stability in transmission systems” that described a technique to model a power system and its behavior that allowed engineers to analyze the longer transmission lines that were becoming more common.
These women are among many who helped make it possible for women to become more integrated into STEM fields. Their contributions to society have helped us in thousands of ways imaginable, such as landing on the moon or getting power to our homes.