Adele Mildred Koss, known as Milly Koss, (born 11 July 1928, died 11 September 2012) was an American computing pioneer. The Association for Women in Computing awarded her an Ada Lovelace Award in 2000. Milly Koss at UNIVAC

She attended Philadelphia High School for Girls and graduated in Mathematics from

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universit ...

in 1950. During her first job interview with an insurance company, Koss, who was engaged at the time, was rejected for the reason that married women will have children and leave. She worked at

Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation The Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC) (March 1946 – 1950) was founded by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly. It was incorporated on December 22, 1947. After building the ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania, Eckert and ...

(EMCC) under

Grace Hopper Grace Brewster Hopper (; December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and United States Navy rear admiral. One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, she was a pioneer of compu ...

, programming the

UNIVAC I The UNIVAC I (Universal Automatic Computer I) was the first general-purpose electronic digital computer design for business application produced in the United States. It was designed principally by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the invent ...

. Her first big project was the development of what has become known as the 'Editing Generator', a sophisticated program to automatically format data for printing. Being able to create margins, headings and page numbers on the fly, Koss was the first programmer to attempt computer based word processing. During her time at EMCC she also wrote some of the first sorting programs and with Hopper wrote the first compiler. After working for several other companies (including Burroughs, Remington Rand, Philco and CDC) Koss moved to

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

where she stayed for 27 years until she retired in 1994, having been Associate Director of the Office for Information Technology and the University's Information Security Officer. Her colleague

Jean Bartik Jean Bartik ( Betty Jean Jennings; December 27, 1924 – March 23, 2011) was one of the original six programmers for the ENIAC computer. Bartik studied mathematics in school then began work at the University of Pennsylvania, first manually ...

recalled that Koss had become pregnant and was expected to leave her post, but she approached Hopper with the idea of what is now known as telecommuting, and Hopper encouraged her to stay on and to work from home as necessary. She negotiated similar arrangements in several subsequent posts. In 1997 she was given a Pioneer Award, one of seven women to be so honoured, at the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing. Koss died on 11 September 2012, survived by three children and three grandchildren. Her husband Norman A. Koss had pre-deceased her: they had been married 60 years.

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* 2012 deaths University of Pennsylvania alumni Harvard University staff Philadelphia High School for Girls alumni American women computer scientists American computer scientists 1928 births 21st-century American women {{compu-bio-stub