Christiane Floyd (née Riedl; born 26 April 1943) is an Austrian computer scientist. In 1978, she became the first female professor of computer science in Germany, and was a pioneer of evolutionary participatory software design—a precursor to
open-source software development
Open-source software development (OSSD) is the process by which open-source software, or similar software whose source code is publicly available, is developed by an open-source software project. These are software products available with its sourc ...
.
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Born Christiane Riedl, she began her career studying mathematics at the
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich h ...
, where she completed her PhD in 1966. From 1966 to 1968, she worked as a systems programmer using an
ALGOL 60
ALGOL 60 (short for ''Algorithmic Language 1960'') is a member of the ALGOL family of computer programming languages. It followed on from ALGOL 58 which had introduced code blocks and the begin and end pairs for delimiting them, representing a k ...
compiler at
Siemens in Munich, Germany. From 1968 to 1973, she worked at the computer science department of
Stanford University in the United States as a research associate and part-time lecturer.
In 1973, she joined the Munich software development company
Softlab, where she worked as a senior consultant and was involved in the development and demonstration of
Maestro I,
[2011 EUSSET-IISI Lifetime Achievement Award to Christiane Floyd]
, EUSSET (2011). the first
integrated development environment
An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools a ...
for software.
In 1978, Floyd became a full professor of software engineering at the
Technical University of Berlin
The Technical University of Berlin (official name both in English and german: link=no, Technische Universität Berlin, also known as TU Berlin and Berlin Institute of Technology) is a public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was ...
—the first woman to be a professor in the field of computer science in Germany.
From 1991, she was head of the software engineering group at the
University of Hamburg
The University of Hamburg (german: link=no, Universität Hamburg, also referred to as UHH) is a public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('' Allgemeines Vor ...
.
Floyd and her group produced one of the first conceptual contributions to
participatory design
Participatory design (originally co-operative design, now often co-design) is an approach to design attempting to actively involve all stakeholders (e.g. employees, partners, customers, citizens, end users) in the design process to help ensure t ...
methods with the STEPS process model (Software Technology for Evolutionary Participatory Systems development).
Floyd formally retired and became a
professor emerita
''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...
at Hamburg in 2008. She has since been involved with the
Vienna University of Technology
TU Wien (TUW; german: Technische Universität Wien; still known in English as the Vienna University of Technology from 1975–2014) is one of the major universities in Vienna, Austria. The university finds high international and domestic recogn ...
WIT project (''Wissenschaftlerinnenkolleg Internettechnologien''; Women's Postgraduate College for Internet Technologies), which offers a specialised PhD program for women in the computer science field. Floyd was granted an honorary professorship at TU Wien on 26 January 2012.
She was married to
Robert W. Floyd and
Peter Naur
Peter Naur (25 October 1928 – 3 January 2016) was a Danish computer science pioneer and Turing award winner. He is best remembered as a contributor, with John Backus, to the Backus–Naur form (BNF) notation used in describing the syntax for ...
—both computer scientists.
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References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Floyd, Christiane
1943 births
Living people
Austrian computer scientists
Austrian women computer scientists
Austrian women scientists
University of Hamburg faculty
Scientists from Vienna
Technical University of Berlin faculty
Stanford University faculty
Siemens people
University of Vienna alumni