{"id":611,"date":"2008-03-11T12:39:35","date_gmt":"2008-03-11T12:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scientopia.org\/blogs\/goodmath\/2008\/03\/11\/science-diversity-meme-the-cs-mutant\/"},"modified":"2008-03-11T12:39:35","modified_gmt":"2008-03-11T12:39:35","slug":"science-diversity-meme-the-cs-mutant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/2008\/03\/11\/science-diversity-meme-the-cs-mutant\/","title":{"rendered":"Science Diversity Meme: The CS Mutant"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Science, Education, and Society<\/a>, the Urban Scientist
\nposts a meme to name five women scientists from each of a list of fields. Sadly, my fields are left off the list. So I’ll respond in my own way
\nby adding computer science. This is a very idiosyncratic list – it’s women
\nwho are particularly important to my own experience as a student and later
\npractitioner of computer science.<\/p>\n

It’s worth noting that I’ve got a very atypical experience as a computer
\nscientist, in that many of the most influential people in my
\ncareer have been women. That’s very unusual, given the incredibly skewed
\nratio of men to women in computer science. But as an undergraduate student,
\na graduate student, and a professional researcher, the majority of people who had a great influence on my education and career have been women.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Fran Allen<\/a>. In a list of women in computer science, Fran has to
    \nbe at the top. (I’ve met Fran Allen personally, and she told me
    \nto call her Fran.) Fran was the first woman to earn the Turing award – and
    \nthe only real question concerning her getting it is why the hell it took
    \nso long. I used to work at IBM Research, where Fran also works, but I knew
    \nabout her long before I went there. Fran is one of the people who
    \ncreated<\/em> the field of compilers. I had the amazing good
    \nfortune to meet Fran on several occasions, and she’s one of the
    \nmost pleasant, interesting people that I’ve ever spoken to. She’s also
    \nan incredibly active advocate for women in math and science, and her
    \ntireless effort has probably brought more women into the field than
    \nanyone else. (Yes, when it comes to Fran, I am pretty much a drooling
    \nfanboy. Fran is my idol :-). If in my career, I can accomplish 1\/50th
    \nof what Fran did, I’ll be a very proud and happy person.)<\/li>\n
  2. Grace Murray Hopper.<\/a> Admiral Grace Murray Hopper was one of the designers of the
    \nCobol programming language. You could make an argument about whether
    \nAdm. Hopper or Fran Allen really deserved to be the first woman to earn
    \nthe Turing award. Personally, having heard her talk a few times, I don’t
    \nthink she held a candle to Fran. But it’s undeniable that she played
    \na crucial, formative role in the creation of what become computer
    \nscience and software engineering.<\/li>\n
  3. Ada Lovelace. You can’t fairly talk about women in computer science
    \nwithout mentioning Lady Ada Lovelace. She was, arguably, the first
    \nprogrammer ever.<\/li>\n
  4. Jeanne Ferrante<\/a>. Professor Ferrante once worked at IBM, but left before I
    \ngot there. I’ve never gotten to meet her. But she wrote one of the first
    \nstatic analysis papers that I ever read, which had a whole lot to do with what
    \nI’ve ended up doing with my life.<\/li>\n
  5. Barbara Ryder.<\/a> Barbara is a professor at my undergraduate alma mater.
    \nI never had the good fortune to take a class taught by her, but I got
    \nto know her anyway. She’s one of the leading researchers in static analysis,
    \nand her students are some of the leading lights in compilers, programming
    \nlanguages, static analysis, and compiler optimization. She’s also one
    \nhell of a tough person, who’s done an amazing amount to fight to get
    \nwomen involved in computer science. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    This list leaves off some women who’ve played major roles in my life and career. Like, for instance, my wife<\/a>, who is a brilliant computational linguist (smarter and a better researcher than I am); my PhD advisor, Lori Pollock<\/a>, who is an amazing researcher and
    \nthe best advisor a student could ask for; my academic grandmother,
    \n    Mary Lou Soffa<\/a>; and one of my favorite current researchers in
    \nsoftware engineering,     Gail Murphy<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    At Science, Education, and Society, the Urban Scientist posts a meme to name five women scientists from each of a list of fields. Sadly, my fields are left off the list. So I’ll respond in my own way by adding computer science. This is a very idiosyncratic list – it’s women who are particularly important […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[39],"tags":[308],"class_list":["post-611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meta","tag-meta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lzZS-9R","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}