Frances Elizabeth Allen (August 4, 1932August 4, 2020) was an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

and pioneer in the field of optimizing compilers. Allen was the first woman to become an IBM Fellow, and in 2006 became the first woman to win the Turing Award. Her achievements include seminal work in compilers, program optimization, and parallelization. She worked for IBM from 1957 to 2002 and subsequently was a Fellow Emerita.

Early life and education

Allen grew up on a farm in Peru,

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

, near Lake Champlain, as the oldest of six children. Her father was a farmer, and her mother an elementary schoolteacher. Her early elementary education took place in a one-room school house a mile away from her home, and she later attended a local high school. She graduated from The New York State College for Teachers (now part of the University at Albany, SUNY) with a Bachelor of Science degree in

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

in 1954 and began teaching school in Peru, New York. After two years, she enrolled at the University of Michigan and earned a Master of Science degree in mathematics in 1957.

Career and research

Deeply in debt with student loans, she joined IBM Research in Poughkeepsie, New York, as a programmer in 1957, where she taught incoming employees the basics of Fortran. She planned to return to teaching once her student loans had been paid, but ended up staying with IBM for her entire 45-year career. In 1959, Allen was assigned to the

Harvest Harvesting is the process of gathering a ripe crop from the fields. Reaping is the cutting of grain or pulse for harvest, typically using a scythe, sickle, or reaper. On smaller farms with minimal mechanization, harvesting is the most labor-i ...

project for code breaking with the National Security Agency, and worked on a programming language called ''Alpha''. She managed the compiler-optimization team for both Harvest and the Stretch project. In 1962, she was transferred to Thomas J. Watson Research Center, where she contributed to the ACS-1 project, and later in the 1970s, to PL/I. During these years, she worked with fellow researcher John Cocke to write a series of seminal papers on optimizing compilers, helping to improve the efficiency of machine code translated from high-level languages. From 1970 to 1971 she spent a

sabbatical A sabbatical (from the Hebrew: (i.e., Sabbath); in Latin ; Greek: ) is a rest or break from work. The concept of the sabbatical is based on the Biblical practice of ''shmita'' (sabbatical year), which is related to agriculture. According to ...

at New York University and acted as

adjunct professor An adjunct professor is a type of academic appointment in higher education who does not work at the establishment full-time. The terms of this appointment and the job security of the tenure vary in different parts of the world, however the genera ...

for a few years afterward. Another sabbatical brought her to

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

in 1977. From 1980 to 1995, Allen led IBM's work in the developing

parallel computing Parallel computing is a type of computation in which many calculations or processes are carried out simultaneously. Large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time. There are several different fo ...

area, and helped to develop software for the IBM Blue Gene project. Allen became the first female IBM Fellow in 1989. She retired from IBM in 2002, but remained affiliated with the corporation as a Fellow Emerita. In 2007, the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Award was created in her honor. After retiring, she remained active in programs that encourage women and girls to seek careers in science and computing. Her A. M. Turing Award citation reads:

Awards and honors

Allen was a Fellow of the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

(IEEE) and the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

(ACM). In 2000, she was made a Fellow of the

Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact on ...

"for her contributions to program optimization and compiling for parallel computers". She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1987, to the American Philosophical Society in 2001, and to the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

in 2010. She was nominated a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994. She received the IEEE Computer Society Charles Babbage Award in 1997 and the Computer Pioneer Award of the IEEE Computer Society in 2004. In 1997, Allen was inducted into the Witi Hall of Fame. She won the 2002 Augusta Ada Lovelace Award from the Association for Women in Computing. In 2004, Allen was the winner of the ABIE Award for Technical Leadership from the

Anita Borg Institute AnitaB.org (formerly Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, and Institute for Women in Technology) is a global nonprofit organization based in Belmont, California. Founded by computer scientists Anita Borg and Telle Whitney, the institute' ...

. Allen was recognized for her work in high-performance computing with the 2006 Turing Award. She became the first woman recipient in the forty-year history of the award, which is considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for computing and is given by the

. In interviews following the award she hoped it would give more "opportunities for women in science, computing, and engineering". In 2009 she was awarded an honorary doctor of science degree from McGill University for "pioneering contributions to the theory and practice of optimizing compiler techniques that laid the foundation for modern optimizing compilers and automatic parallel execution".

Publications

A list of her select publications includes: * * Allen, Frances E., "Interprocedural data flow analysis", ''Proceedings of Information Processing 74'', IFIP, Elsevier / North-Holland (1974), 398–402. * Allen, Frances E. and J. Cocke, "A program data flow analysis procedure", ''Communications of the ACM'', Vol. 19, No. 3 (March 1976), 137–147. * Allen, Frances E. et al., "The Experimental Compiling System", ''IBM Journal of Research and Development'', Vol. 24, No. 6, (November 1980), 695–715. * Allen, Frances E., "The history of language processor technology at IBM", ''IBM Journal of Research and Development'', Vol. 25, No. 5 (September 1981), 535–548.

Personal life

In 1972, Allen married New York University computer science professor and collaborator Jacob T. Schwartz. They divorced in 1982. Allen died on August 4, 2020, her 88th birthday, from complications with Alzheimer’s disease.

References

External links

Frances Allen: 2000 Fellow Awards Recipient
via Computer History Museum
Fran Allen on Compilers and Parallel Computing Systems
Notes from her 2008 Organick Memorial Lecture {{DEFAULTSORT:Allen, Frances 1932 births 2020 deaths American computer scientists Programming language researchers American women computer scientists Turing Award laureates Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellow Members of the IEEE IBM Fellows Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering IBM Research computer scientists New York University faculty People from Peru, New York University at Albany, SUNY alumni University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts alumni 20th-century American scientists 21st-century American scientists 20th-century American women scientists 21st-century American women scientists Scientists from New York (state)