Five Amazing Women of Tech

Although there has been so much talk lately about the scarcity of women who are seeking careers in math, science and technology, it hasn't always been a “boys only” industry. In fact, there are many amazing women who played crucial parts in the creation of the modern computer and made breakthroughs in math and science.

You might think that I'm referring to women like Marissa Meyer, the former Google employer and current CEO of Yahoo, but women have been working in technology, math and science for a very long time. The only thing is that most people simply aren't aware of it because many of their contributions were credited to men. In addition, because women tend to work well in teams, often their individual accomplishments take a backseat.

A recent Google Doodle honoring Ada Lovelace and her contributions to technology made me realize that it's time to recognize some of these amazing women and the strides they made in their fields, despite being discriminated against because of their gender.

Ada Lovelace – She is often called the “World's First Computer Programmer”, I prefer “Enchantress of numbers”. She was born in 1815, the daughter of the famous poet, Lord Byron and his wife, Anne Byron. Although he had several other children, Ada was the only legitimate one. Shortly after her birth, her father left the family and when she was only eight, he died. In order to protect her from the “evils of poetry”, her mother pushed her into the more serious topics of mathematics and science. As an adult, she worked with Charles Babbage on the Analytical Engine. In 1843, she translated a paper written by Luigi Menabrea and included a set of her own notes. Those notes included a design for a computer and an algorithm designed to be processed by a machine. These notes are considered to be the first computer program. In addition, she was the first to understand the many different uses for a computer - unlike Babbage, who focused solely on calculating ability.

Grace Hooper – Admiral Grace Hooper was not only one of the first computer programmers, but she was also the first woman to graduate from Yale with a Ph.D in mathematics. As if that wasn't enough, she was also the first woman to reach the rank of Admiral in the U.S. Navy. In 1952, she invented the first computer compiler and she also developed Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL). She is also credited with popularizing the term “bug” and “de-bug”, which she would use whenever a moth flew into the system. Admiral Hooper also played a key role in the develipment of FLOW-MATIC language for the UNIVAC I and UNIVAC II.

Radia Perlman – Radia Perlman is often called the “Mother of the Internet”. As a software designer and network engineer, she is most widely known for her invention of the spanning-tree protocol, which is a network protocol that ensures a loop-free topology for any bridged Ethernet local area network, which is a key component of any network bridge. In addition, she's made strides in network design and standardization – including TRILL, which she created to correct the failings of spanning-tree. She has a Bachelor's and a Master's in Mathematics and even has a Ph.D in Computer Science from MIT. Currently, she works for IBM and holds more than 50 patents.

Carol Shaw – Who said women can't design video games? Carol Shaw is said to be the first female video game designer. Initially, she began work with Atari and then later joined Activision. At Activision, she created her most widely known game, River Raid, which was released in 1982. In addition, she created 3-D Tic Tac Toe, Super Breakout and Happy Trails. In addition to her work in video game design, she is largely credited with anticipating the industry's procedural content generation by using algorithms to create continuous, but non-random landscapes.

Sister Mary Kenneth Keller – Sister Keller was the first woman to be awarded a Ph.D in computer science. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1965 and went on to assist in the development of BASIC computer language at Dartmouth – in spite of their “men only” rule. Sister Keller felt strongly that women should be involved in computer science. She received a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Mathematics from DePaul University. Later in her career, she founded and directed the computer science department at Clarke College.

There have been so many amazing and inspirational women in technology, math and science that it was extremely difficult to pick just 5. Just to be fair, I didn't rank these women based on achievement. Instead, I tried to select women from different time periods to show how women have been involved with technology over many decades.

Image Source: GoogleDoodles