This is a timeline of

women in computing Women in computing were among the first programmers in the early 20th century, and contributed substantially to the industry. As technology and practices altered, the role of women as programmers has changed, and the recorded history of the fi ...

. It covers the time when women worked as "

human computer The term "computer", in use from the early 17th century (the first known written reference dates from 1613), meant "one who computes": a person performing mathematical calculations, before electronic calculators became available. Alan Turing ...

s" and then as programmers of physical computers. Eventually, women programmers went on to write software, develop Internet technologies and other types of programming. Women have also been involved in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

, various related types of engineering and computer hardware.

18th century

1757

* Nicole-Reine Etable de la Brière Lepaute worked on a team of human computers to determine the next visit of

Halley's Comet Halley's Comet is the only known List of periodic comets, short-period comet that is consistently visible to the naked eye from Earth, appearing every 72–80 years, though with the majority of recorded apparitions (25 of 30) occurring after ...

. The methods they developed have been used by successive human computing teams.

19th century

1842

Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (''née'' Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), also known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-pur ...

was an analyst of

Charles Babbage Charles Babbage (; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer. Babbage is considered ...

's analytical engine and is considered by many the "first computer programmer".

1849

Maria Mitchell Maria Mitchell ( ; August 1, 1818 – June 28, 1889) was an American astronomer, librarian, naturalist, and educator. In 1847, she discovered a comet named 1847 VI (modern designation C/1847 T1) that was later known as " Miss Mitchell's Comet ...

is hired by the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office to work as a computer on tables for the planet

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is often called Earth's "twin" or "sister" planet for having almost the same size and mass, and the closest orbit to Earth's. While both are rocky planets, Venus has an atmosphere much thicker ...

1875

* Anna Winlock joined the

Harvard computers The Harvard Computers were a team of women working as skilled workers to process astronomical data at the Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The team was directed by Edward Charles Pickering (1877 to 1919) ...

, a group of women engaged in the production of astronomical data at Harvard.

1893

Henrietta Swan Leavitt Henrietta Swan Leavitt (; July 4, 1868 – December 12, 1921) was an American astronomer. Her discovery of how to effectively measure vast distances to remote galaxies led to a shift in the understanding of the scale and nature of the universe. ...

joined the Harvard "computers". She was instrumental in discovery of the

cepheid variable A Cepheid variable () is a type of variable star that pulsates radially, varying in both diameter and temperature. It changes in brightness, with a well-defined stable period (typically 1–100 days) and amplitude. Cepheids are important cosmi ...

stars, which are evidence for the

expansion of the universe The expansion of the universe is the increase in proper length, distance between Gravitational binding energy, gravitationally unbound parts of the observable universe with time. It is an intrinsic and extrinsic properties (philosophy), intrins ...

20th century

1916

* Beatrice Cave-Brown-Cave went to work as a human computer for the

Ministry of Munitions The Minister of Munitions was a British government position created during the First World War to oversee and co-ordinate the production and distribution of munitions for the war effort. The position was created in response to the Shell Crisis o ...

1918

*Women were hired to do

ballistics Ballistics is the field of mechanics concerned with the launching, flight behaviour and impact effects of projectiles, especially weapon munitions such as bullets, unguided bombs, rockets and the like; the science or art of designing and acceler ...

calculations as human computers in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

The "chief computer" of the group was Elizabeth Webb Wilson.

1920

* Mary Clem leads the computing lab at

Iowa State College Iowa State University of Science and Technology (Iowa State University, Iowa State, or ISU) is a public land-grant research university in Ames, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1858 as the Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm, Iowa State be ...

1921

Edith Clarke Edith Clarke (February 10, 1883 – October 29, 1959) was an American engineer and academic. She was the first woman to be professionally employed as an electrical engineer in the United States and the first female professor of electrical engi ...

files a patent for a graphical calculator for problem solving electric power-line transmission problems.

1926

Grete Hermann Grete Hermann (2 March 1901 – 15 April 1984) was a German mathematician and philosopher noted for her work in mathematics, physics, philosophy and education. She is noted for her early philosophical work on the foundations of quantum mechanics ...

published the foundational paper for computerized algebra. It was her doctoral thesis, titled "The Question of Finitely Many Steps in Polynomial Ideal Theory", and published in Mathematische Annalen.

1935

*The

National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was a United States federal agency that was founded on March 3, 1915, to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1, 1958, the agency was dissolved and its ...

(NACA) which became

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

, hired a group of five women to work in their computer pool analyzing data from wind tunnels and flight tests.

1939

*The Austrian Johanna Piesch published two pioneering papers on switching algebra.

1940

*American women were recruited to do ballistics calculations and program computers during WWII. Around 1943–1945, these women "computers" used a

differential analyzer The differential analyser is a mechanical analogue computer designed to solve differential equations by integration, using wheel-and-disc mechanisms to perform the integration. It was one of the first advanced computing devices to be used ope ...

in the basement of the Moore School of Electrical Engineering to speed up their calculations, though the machine required a mechanic to be totally accurate and the women often rechecked the calculations by hand. Phyllis Fox ran a differential analyzer single-handedly, with differential equations as her program specification.

1941

Mavis Batey Mavis Lilian Batey, MBE (née Lever; 5 May 1921 – 12 November 2013), was a British code-breaker during World War II. She was one of the leading female codebreakers at Bletchley Park. She later became a historian of gardening, who campaign ...

broke the Italian Naval code while working at

Bletchley Park Bletchley Park is an English country house and Bletchley Park estate, estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes (Buckinghamshire), that became the principal centre of Allies of World War II, Allied World War II cryptography, code-breaking during the S ...

. *The United States begins recruiting African-American college graduates to work at

Langley Air Force Base Langley Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base located in Hampton, Virginia, adjacent to Newport News. It was one of thirty-two Air Service training camps established after the entry of the United States into World War I in April 1 ...

as human computers.

1942

*On 11 August,

Hedy Lamarr Hedy Lamarr (; born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler; November 9, 1914 January 19, 2000) was an Austrian-born American actress and inventor. After a brief early film career in Czechoslovakia, including the controversial erotic romantic drama '' Ecstasy ...

and co-inventor,

George Antheil George Johann Carl Antheil ( ; July 8, 1900 – February 12, 1959) was an American avant-garde composer, pianist, author, and inventor whose modernist musical compositions explored the sounds – musical, industrial, and mechanical – of the ear ...

, received their patent for

frequency hopping Frequency-hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) is a method of transmitting radio signals by rapidly changing the carrier frequency among many frequencies occupying a large spectral band. The changes are controlled by a code known to both transmitter ...

1943

*Women worked as WREN Colossus operators during

WW2 World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many nations mobilising ...

. *Wives of scientists working on the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the ...

with mathematical training were hired as

human computers The term "computer", in use from the early 17th century (the first known written reference dates from 1613), meant "one who computes": a person performing mathematical calculations, before electronic calculators became available. Alan Turing de ...

to work on the

ENIAC ENIAC (; Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first Computer programming, programmable, Electronics, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, completed in 1945. Other computers had some of these features, but ENIAC was ...

and

MANIAC I __NOTOC__ The MANIAC I (Mathematical Analyzer Numerical Integrator and Automatic Computer Model I) was an early computer built under the direction of Nicholas Metropolis at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. It ...

computers. This included

Klara Dan von Neumann Klara may refer to: * Klara, a female given name, see Clara (given name) * Klara (radio), a classical-music radio station in Belgium * Klara (singer), birth name Klára Vytisková (born 1985), Czech singer * Klara (Stockholm), an area of central S ...

, Augusta H. Teller, and

Adele Goldstine Adele Goldstine (; December 21, 1920 – November 1964) was an American mathematician and computer programmer. She wrote the manual for the first electronic digital computer, ENIAC. Through her work programming the computer, she was also an inst ...

. * Gertrude Blanch led the

Mathematical Tables Project The Mathematical Tables Project was one of the largest and most sophisticated computing organizations that operated prior to the invention of the digital electronic computer. Begun in the United States in 1938 as a project of the Works Progress Admi ...

group from 1938 to 1948. During World War II, the project operated as a major computing office for the U.S. government and did calculations for the

Office of Scientific Research and Development The Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) was an agency of the United States federal government created to coordinate scientific research for military purposes during World War II. Arrangements were made for its creation during May ...

, the Army, the Navy, the Manhattan Project and other institutions. * Ruth Leach Amonette was elected vice president at IBM, the first woman to hold that role.

1945

* Marlyn Meltzer is hired as one of the first

programmers. * Kay McNulty Mauchly Antonelli is hired as one of the ENIAC programmers and is accredited with creating the first 'subroutine'.

1946

* Betty Jennings,

Betty Snyder Frances Elizabeth Holberton (March 7, 1917 – December 8, 2001) was an American computer scientist who was one of the six original programmers of the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And ...

Frances Spence Frances V. Spence ( Bilas; March 2, 1922 – July 18, 2012) was an American physicist and computer scientist. She was one of the original programmers for the ENIAC (the first electronic digital computer). She is considered one of the first comput ...

Kay McNulty Kathleen Rita Antonelli ( McNulty; formerly Mauchly; 12 February 1921 – 20 April 2006), known as Kay McNulty, was an Irish computer programmer and one of the six original programmers of the ENIAC, one of the first general-purpose electronic ...

, Marlyn Wescoff, and Ruth Lichterman were the regularly working programmers of the

, also involved in the programming, wrote the program manual for the

1947

* Irma Wyman worked on a missile guidance project at the Willow Run Research Center. To calculate trajectory, they used mechanical calculators. In 1947–48, she visited the U.S. Naval Proving Ground where

Grace Hopper Grace Brewster Hopper (; December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and United States Navy rear admiral. She was a pioneer of computer programming. Hopper was the first to devise the theory of mach ...

was working on similar problems and discovered they were using a prototype of a programmable

Mark II Mark II or Mark 2 often refers to the second version of a product, frequently military hardware. "Mark", meaning "model" or "variant", can be abbreviated "Mk." Mark II or Mark 2 may refer to: Military and weaponry * 16"/50 caliber Mark 2 gun ...

computer.

1948

Kathleen Booth Kathleen Hylda Valerie Booth ( Britten, 9 July 1922 – 29 September 2022) was a British computer scientist and mathematician who wrote the first assembly language and designed the assembler and autocode for the first computer systems at Birkbe ...

is credited with writing the assembly language for the ARC2 computer. * Dorothy Vaughn becomes the first black supervisor at NACA.

1949

, was a

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...

officer and one of the first programmers of the

Harvard Mark I The Harvard Mark I, or IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC), was one of the earliest general-purpose electromechanical computers used in the war effort during the last part of World War II. One of the first programs to run on th ...

, known as the "Mother of

COBOL COBOL (; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative, procedural, and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is primarily ...

". She developed the first

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that Translator (computing), translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primaril ...

for an electronic computer, known as A-0. She also popularized the term "debugging" – a reference to a moth extracted from a relay in the Harvard Mark II computer. *

Evelyn Boyd Granville Evelyn Boyd Granville (May 1, 1924 – June 27, 2023) was an American mathematician and computer scientist. She was the second African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics from an American university; she earned it in 1949 from Yale ...

was the second African-American woman in the U.S. to receive a PhD in mathematics. From 1956 to 1960, she worked for IBM on the

Project Vanguard Project Vanguard was a program managed by the United States Navy Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), which intended to launch the first Satellite, artificial satellite into low Earth orbit using a Vanguard (rocket), Vanguard rocket as the launch ...

and

Project Mercury Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. An early highlight of the Space Race, its goal was to put a man into Earth orbit and return him safely, ideally before the Soviet Un ...

space programs, analyzing orbits and developing computer procedures. *On 6 May, the EDSAC performs its first calculations using a program written by Beatrice Worsely.

1950

* Ida Rhodes was one of the pioneers in the analysis of systems of programming. She co-designed the C-10 language in the early 1950s for the UNIVAC I – a computer system that was used to calculate the census. *

creates

Assembly Language In computing, assembly language (alternatively assembler language or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence bet ...

1951

* Frances Elizabeth "Betty" Snyder develops a UNIVAC program, the first sort-merge generator.

1952

Mary Coombs Mary Clare Coombs ( Blood, 4 February 1929 – 28 February 2022) was a British computer programmer and schoolteacher. Employed in 1952 as the first female programmer to work on the LEO computers, she is recognised as the first female commercia ...

was one of the first programmers on, and was the first female programmer on LEO, the first business computer. She went on to work on LEO II and LEO III. *Hungarian-born

pioneers the programming of

. *Canadian,

Beatrice Worsley Beatrice Helen Worsley (18 October 1921 – 8 May 1972) was a Canadian computer scientist, the first woman in the country to work in that profession. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge with Maurice Wilkes as adviser, the firs ...

, completes her doctorate in computer science, becoming the first woman to earn that degree.

1954

Thelma Estrin Thelma Estrin (née Austern; February 21, 1924 – February 15, 2014) was an American computer scientist and engineer who did pioneering work in the fields of expert systems and biomedical engineering. Estrin was one of the first to apply compute ...

works on Israel's first computer, the

WEIZAC WEIZAC (''Weizmann Automatic Computer'') was the first computer in Israel, and one of the first large-scale, stored program, stored-program, electronic computers in the world. It was built at the Weizmann Institute during 1954–1955, based on th ...

1955

* Annie Easley starts working as a human computer for NACA. *

Kateryna Yushchenko Kateryna Mykhaylivna Yushchenko (born Catherine Claire Chumachenko, September 1, 1961) is an American-born Ukrainian politician and philanthropist who was the First Lady of Ukraine from 2005 to 2010. Family Yushchenko's father, Mykhailo Chuma ...

creates

Address (programming language) The Address programming language (, ) is one of the world's first high-level programming languages. It was created in 1955 by Kateryna Yushchenko. In particular, the Address programming language made possible indirect addressing and addresses of ...

that made possible indirect addressing and addresses of the highest rank – analogous to pointers. *

Mary Tsingou Mary Tsingou (married name: Mary Tsingou-Menzel; born October 14, 1928) is an American physicist and mathematician of Greek-Bulgarian descent. She was one of the first programmers on the MANIAC computer at Los Alamos National Laboratory and is ...

runs code on

to describe interacting waves on a string. The famous Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou problem revealed a paradox in nonlinear dynamics, and the value of computer simulation in analyzing complex systems. The FPUT work stimulated the emerging field of nonlinear

computational science Computational science, also known as scientific computing, technical computing or scientific computation (SC), is a division of science, and more specifically the Computer Sciences, which uses advanced computing capabilities to understand and s ...

that relies on computers to carry out numerical experiments.

1958

*Orbital calculations for the United States'

Explorer 1 Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States in 1958 and was part of the U.S. participation in the International Geophysical Year (IGY). The mission followed the first two satellites, both launched by the Soviet Union duri ...

satellite were solved by the NASA

Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) in La Cañada Flintridge, California, Crescenta Valley, United States. Founded in 1936 by Cali ...

's all-female "computers", many of whom were recruited out of high school. Mechanical calculators were supplemented with logarithmic calculations performed by hand. *

designs the computer language, FLOWMATIC. *5 May, Langley desegregates, closing down the

West Area Computers The West Area Computers (short for West Area Computing Unit) were the African American, female mathematicians who worked as human computers at the Langley Research Center of NACA (predecessor of NASA) from 1943 through 1958. These women were a sub ...

. *

publishes a book about programming APE(X)C computers.

1959

* Mary K. Hawes convenes a meeting to discuss specifications for a business programming language. This would lead to the creation of

1961

* Dana Ulery was the first female engineer at

, developing real-time tracking systems using a North American Aviation Recomp II, a 40-bit word size computer.

1962

* Jean E. Sammet developed the FORMAC programming language. She was also the first to write extensively about the history and categorization of programming languages in 1969, and became the first female president of 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 membe ...

in 1974. * Dame Stephanie "Steve" Shirley founded the UK software company F.I. She was concerned with creating work opportunities for women with dependents, and predominantly employed women, only 3 out of 300-odd programmers were male, until that became illegal. She adopted the name "Steve" to help her in the male-dominated business world. From 1989 to 1990, she was president of the

British Computer Society image:Maurice Vincent Wilkes 1980 (3).jpg, Sir Maurice Wilkes served as the first President of BCS in 1957. The British Computer Society (BCS), branded BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, since 2009, is a professional body and a learned ...

. In 1985, she was awarded a Recognition of Information Technology Award.

1964

* Joan Ball was the first person to start a computer dating service in 1964. * Sharla Boehm performed pioneering work in

packet switching In telecommunications, packet switching is a method of grouping Data (computing), data into short messages in fixed format, i.e. ''network packet, packets,'' that are transmitted over a digital Telecommunications network, network. Packets consi ...

1965

* Mary Allen Wilkes was the first person to use a computer in a private home (in 1965) and the first developer of an operating system (LAP) for the first

minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a type of general-purpose computer mostly developed from the mid-1960s, built significantly smaller and sold at a much lower price than mainframe computers . By 21st century-standards however, a mini is ...

(

LINC The LINC (Laboratory INstrument Computer) is a 12-bit, 2048-word transistorized computer. The LINC is considered by some to be the first minicomputer and a forerunner to the personal computer. Originally named the Linc, suggesting the project' ...

). * Sister Mary Kenneth Keller became the first American woman to earn a Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1965. Her thesis was titled "Inductive Inference on Computer Generated Patterns".

1966

* Margaret R. Fox was appointed Chief of the Office of Computer Information in 1966, part of the Institute for Computer Science and Technology of NBS. She held the post until 1975. She was also actively involved in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and served as the first Secretary for the

American Federation of Information Processing Societies The American Federation of Information Processing Societies (AFIPS) was an umbrella organization of professional societies established on May 10, 1961, and dissolved in 1990. Its mission was to advance knowledge in the field of information scien ...

(AFIPS).

1968

Vera Molnár Vera Molnár (; 5 January 1924 – 7 December 2023) was a Hungarian media artist who lived and worked in Paris, France. Molnár is widely considered to have been a pioneer of the generative art aspect of computer art. She was one of the first ...

is one of the pioneers of computer and algorithmic arts. In 1968 she began working with computers, where she began to create algorithmic drawings based on simple geometric shapes geometrical themes.

1969

* Jean E. Sammet publishes ''Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals'', which was the standard in the field at the time. * Margaret Hamilton was, in the late 1960s, Director of the Software Engineering Division of the

MIT Instrumentation Laboratory Draper Laboratory is an American non-profit research and development organization, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts; its official name is The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. The laboratory specializes in the design, development, an ...

, which developed on-board flight software for the Apollo space program. MIT work prevented an abort of the

Apollo 11 Apollo 11 was a spaceflight conducted from July 16 to 24, 1969, by the United States and launched by NASA. It marked the first time that humans Moon landing, landed on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin l ...

Moon landing by using robust architecture. Later, she was awarded the NASA Exceptional Space Act Award for her scientific and technical contributions.NASA Press Releas
"NASA Honors Apollo Engineer"
(3 September 2003)''Michael Braukus'' NASA New

(3 September 2003) * Alexandra Illmer Forsythe is a co-author of the first computer science

textbook A textbook is a book containing a comprehensive compilation of content in a branch of study with the intention of explaining it. Textbooks are produced to meet the needs of educators, usually at educational institutions, but also of learners ( ...

, ''Computer Science: A First Course'' (Wiley & Sons).

1970

* Drude Berntsen is appointed director of the

Norwegian Computing Center Norwegian Computing Center (NR, in Norwegian: ''Norsk Regnesentral'') is a private, independent, non-profit research foundation. NR carries out contract research and development in the areas of computing and quantitative methods for a broad range o ...

1971

* Erna Schneider Hoover is an American mathematician notable for inventing a computerized telephone switching method which developed modern communication according to several reports. At Bell Laboratories, where she worked for over 32 years, Hoover was described as an important pioneer for women in the field of computer technology. * Margaret Burnett became the first woman software developer ever hired by Procter & Gamble/Ivorydale, a 13,000-employee complex that included their R&D center. Her position as a software developer also made her the first woman ever hired into a management-level position there.

1972

* Mary Shaw became the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in computer science from

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

. * Adele Goldberg was one of developers of the

Smalltalk Smalltalk is a purely object oriented programming language (OOP) that was originally created in the 1970s for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, but later found use in business. It was created at Xerox PARC by Learni ...

language. *

Karen Spärck Jones Karen Ida Boalth Spärck Jones (26 August 1935 – 4 April 2007) was a self-taught programmer and a pioneering British computer and information scientist responsible for the concept of inverse document frequency (IDF), a technology that unde ...

was one of the pioneers of information retrieval and natural language processing. * Sandra Kurtzig founded ASK Computer Systems, an early Silicon Valley startup, on a $20,000 budget.

1973

* Susan Nycum co-authored ''Computer Abuse'', a minor classic that was one of the first studies to define and document computer-related crime. * Phyllis Fox worked on the PORT portable mathematical/numerical library.

1974

Elizabeth Feinler Elizabeth Jocelyn "Jake" Feinler (born March 2, 1931) is an American information scientist. From 1972 until 1989 she was director of the Network Information Systems Center at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI International). Her group operat ...

and her team defined a simple text file format for Internet host names. The list evolved into the

Domain Name System The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed name service that provides a naming system for computers, services, and other resources on the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information ...

and her group became the naming authority for the top-level domains of .mil, .gov, .edu, .org, and .com.

1975

* Irene Greif became the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in computer science from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

. *Indian computer scientist Sudha Murthy is hired as first woman to work for TELCO as an engineer. *Charity Cheiky co-founds the pioneering microcomputer systems manufacturer Ohio Scientific Instruments, with her husband Michael and business partner Dale Dreisbach.

1976

Rózsa Péter Rózsa Péter, until January 1934 Rózsa Politzer, (17 February 1905 – 16 February 1977) was a Hungarian mathematician and logician. She is best known as the "founding mother of recursion theory". Early life and education Péter was bor ...

publishes ''Recursive Functions in Computer Theory'', a topic she had been working on since the 1950s.

1978

Sophie Wilson Sophie Mary Wilson (born Roger Wilson; June 1957) is an English computer scientist, a co-designer of the instruction set for the ARM architecture. Wilson first designed a microcomputer during a break from studies at Selwyn College, Cambridge. ...

is a British computer scientist. She is known for designing the Acorn Micro-Computer, as well as the instruction set of the

ARM processor ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of RISC instruction set architectures (ISAs) for computer processors. Arm Holdings develops the ISAs and licen ...

. *The Association for Women in Computing (AWC) is founded. * Christiane Floyd becomes the first woman to work as a computer science professor in Germany.

1979

Lynn Conway Lynn Ann Conway (January 2, 1938 – June 9, 2024) was an American computer scientist, electrical engineer, and transgender activist. In the 1960s, while working at IBM, Conway invented generalized dynamic instruction handling, a key advance ...

co-authored ''Introduction to VLSI Systems'', a bestselling very-large-scale integration ( VLSI) design textbook that triggered the Mead and Conway revolution in integrated circuit design. * Patricia Selinger was one of the key architects of

IBM System R IBM System R is a database system built as a research project at IBM's San Jose Research Laboratory beginning in 1974, led by Edgar Codd, to implement his ideas on relational databases. System R was a seminal project as the first implementation ...

, and in 1979 wrote the canonical paper on relational query optimization. She was appointed an IBM Fellow in 1994, and an ACM Fellow in 2009. *

Carol Shaw Carol Shaw (born 1955) is one of the first female Video game design, game designers and Programmer, programmers in the video game industry. She is best known for creating the Atari 2600 vertically scrolling shooter game ''River Raid'' (1982) for ...

was a game designer and programmer for Atari Corp. and

Activision Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one o ...

. * Ruzena Bajcsy founds the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) lab at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

. * Priti Shankar does work with generalizing the Bose Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BHC) codes for error-correcting.

1980

* Carla Meninsky was the game designer and programmer for

Atari 2600 The Atari 2600 is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977 as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS), it popularized microprocessor-based hardware and games stored on swappable ROM cartridg ...

games ''

Star Raiders ''Star Raiders'' is a space combat simulator video game created by Doug Neubauer and published in 1980 by Atari, Inc. Originally released for the Atari 8-bit computers, Atari 400/800 computers, ''Star Raiders'' was later ported to the Atari 2 ...

'' and ''

Warlords Warlords are individuals who exercise military, economic, and political control over a region, often one without a strong central or national government, typically through informal control over local armed forces. Warlords have existed throug ...

''. * Gwen Bell starts the

Computer Museum A computer museum is devoted to the study of historic computer hardware and software, where a "museum" is a "permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, comm ...

to preserve artifacts of computer history. * Ruth M. Davis founds Pymatuning Group in Virginia.

1982

Lorinda Cherry Lorinda Cherry ( Landgraf; November 18, 1944 – February 11, 2022) was an American computer scientist and programmer. Much of her career was spent at Bell Labs, where she was for many years a member of the original Unix Lab. Cherry developed se ...

worked on the Writer's Workbench (wwb) for

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...

. * Marsha R. Williams becomes the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in computer science.

1983

* Janese Swanson (with others) developed the first of the ''

Carmen Sandiego ''Carmen Sandiego'' (sometimes referred to as ''Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?'') is a media franchise based on a Carmen Sandiego (video game series), series of computer video games created by the American software company Broderbund. Whi ...

'' games. She went on to found Girl Tech. Girl Tech develops products and services that encourage girls to use new technologies, such as the Internet and video games.

1984

* Roberta Williams did pioneering work in graphical adventure games for

personal computers A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...

, particularly the ''

King's Quest ''King's Quest'' is a graphic adventure game series, released between 1980 and 2016 and created by the American software company Sierra Entertainment. It is widely considered a classic series from the golden era of adventure games. Following ...

'' series. *

Susan Kare Susan Kare ( "care"; born February 5, 1954) is an American artist and graphic designer, who contributed graphical user interface, interface elements and typefaces for the first Apple Inc., Apple Macintosh 128k, Macintosh personal computer from ...

created the icons and many of the interface elements for the original

Apple Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

in the 1980s, and was an original employee of

NeXT NeXT, Inc. (later NeXT Computer, Inc. and NeXT Software, Inc.) was an American technology company headquartered in Redwood City, California that specialized in computer workstations for higher education and business markets, and later develope ...

, working as the Creative Director. * Eleanor K. Baum becomes the first woman in the United States to be named dean of an engineering college.

1985

Radia Perlman Radia Joy Perlman (; born December 18, 1951) is an American computer programmer and network engineer. She is a major figure in assembling the networks and technology to enable what we now know as the Internet. She is most famous for her inventi ...

invented the

Spanning Tree Protocol The Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) is a network protocol that builds a loop-free logical topology for Ethernet networks. The basic function of STP is to prevent bridge loops and the broadcast radiation that results from them. Spanning tree al ...

. She has done extensive and innovative research, particularly on encryption and networking. She received the USENIX Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006. * Irma Wyman was the first

Honeywell Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building automation, industrial automa ...

CIO. * Janet Walker develops the

Symbolics Document Examiner Symbolics Document Examiner is a powerful and early hypertext system developed at Symbolics (a manufacturer of high-end workstations) by Janet Walker in 1985. The Symbolics Document Examiner was first used for a hypertext implementation of the Symb ...

1986

Lixia Zhang Lixia Zhang () is the Jonathan B. Postel Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Los Angeles.. Her expertise is in computer networks; she helped found the Internet Engineering Task Force, designed the Resource Reservation ...

was the only woman at the initial meetings of the

Internet Engineering Task Force The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet standard, Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster ...

. * Nancy Hafkin heads the Pan African Development Information System.

1987

* Monica S. Lam receives a Ph.D. for her work on optimising compilers. She has since then performed influential research in many areas of computer science as well as co-authored a famous textbook on compilers. *

Anita Borg Anita Borg (January 17, 1949 – April 6, 2003) was an American computer scientist celebrated for advocating for women’s representation and professional advancement in technology. She founded the Institute for Women and Technology and the Gra ...

founds the

electronic mailing list A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. Mailing lists are often rented or sold. If rented, the renter agrees to use the mailing list only at contra ...

for women in technology,

Systers Systers, founded by Anita Borg, is an international electronic mailing list for technical women in computing. The Syster community strives to increase the number of women in computer science and improve work environments for women. The mailing list ...

. *French computer scientist, Joëlle Coutaz develops the Presentation-abstraction-control model for human computer interactions.

1988

Éva Tardos Éva Tardos (born 1 October 1957) is a Hungarian mathematician and the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University. Tardos's research interest is algorithms. Her work focuses on the design and analysis of efficient ...

, is the recipient of the

Fulkerson Prize The Fulkerson Prize for outstanding papers in the area of discrete mathematics is sponsored jointly by the Mathematical Optimization Society (MOS) and the American Mathematical Society (AMS). Up to three awards of $1,500 each are presented at e ...

for her research on design and

analysis of algorithms In computer science, the analysis of algorithms is the process of finding the computational complexity of algorithms—the amount of time, storage, or other resources needed to execute them. Usually, this involves determining a function that r ...

. * Janie Tsao co-founds

Linksys Linksys Holdings, Inc., is an American brand of data networking hardware products mainly sold to home users and small businesses. It was founded in 1988 by the couple Victor Tsao, Victor and Janie Tsao, both Taiwanese immigrants to the United St ...

1989

Frances E. Allen Frances Elizabeth Allen (August 4, 1932August 4, 2020) was an American computer scientist 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 ...

became the first female IBM Fellow in 1989. In 2006, she became the first female recipient of the ACM's

Turing Award The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in the fi ...

. * Frances Brazier, professor of Computer Science at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, is one of the founder of

NLnet The NLnet Foundation supports organizations and people that contribute to an open information society. It was influential in spreading the Internet throughout Europe in the 1980s. In 1997, the foundation sold off its commercial networking operat ...

, the first

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, no ...

in the Netherlands.

1990

*Ruzena Bajcsy becomes the first woman to chair the computer and information science department at the University of Pennsylvania.

1992

Donna Dubinsky Donna Dubinsky is an American businesswoman who played a role in the development of personal digital assistants (PDAs), as CEO of Palm, Inc. and co-founding Handspring with Jeff Hawkins in 1995. Dubinsky co-founded Numenta in 2005 with Hawkins ...

CEO and co-founder of

Palm, Inc. Palm, Inc., was an American company that specialized in manufacturing personal digital assistants (PDAs) and developing software. Palm designed the PalmPilot, the first PDA successfully marketed worldwide, and was known for the Treo 600, one ...

, co-founder of

Handspring Handspring may refer to: *Handspring (company), a company that made personal digital assistants *Handspring (gymnastics), a gymnastics move involving forward or backward rotation of the body *Rising handspring or nip-up, an acrobatic transition fr ...

, co-founder of Numenta, Harvard Business School's Alumni Achievement Award winner for "introducing the first successful personal digital assistant (PDA) and who is now developing a computer memory system modeled after the human brain". *Nancy Rhine and Ellen Pack co-found the first online space targeting women,

Women's WIRE Women's WIRE (later Women.com) was the first online space and the first Internet company to target women. It was founded in California first as simply WIRE in 1992, an acronym that stood for Women's Information Resource & Exchange, and could be ac ...

. *

Carol Bartz Carol Ann Bartz (born August 28, 1948) is an American business executive, former president and CEO of the internet services company Yahoo!, and former chairman, president, and CEO at architectural and engineering design software company Autodesk ...

becomes the CEO of

Autodesk Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that provides software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquarte ...

1993

Shafi Goldwasser Shafrira Goldwasser (; born 1959) is an Israeli-American computer scientist. A winner of the Turing Award in 2012, she is the RSA Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; a professor o ...

, a theoretical computer scientist, is a two-time recipient of the

Gödel Prize The Gödel Prize is an annual prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science, given jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Association for Computing Machinery Special Inter ...

for research on complexity theory, cryptography and computational number theory, and the invention of zero-knowledge proofs. *

Barbara Liskov Barbara Liskov (born November 7, 1939, as Barbara Jane Huberman) is an American computer scientist who has made pioneering contributions to programming languages and distributed computing. Her notable work includes the introduction of abstract da ...

together with Jeannette Wing, developed the Liskov substitution principle. Liskov was also the winner of the Turing Prize in 2008. *Carolyn Gruyer writes feminist

hypertext Hypertext is E-text, text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typic ...

, ''Quibbling''.

1994

Sally Floyd Sally Jean Floyd (May 20, 1950 – August 25, 2019) was an American computer scientist known for her work on computer networking. Formerly associated with the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, California, she retired in 2009 a ...

, is known for her work on

Transmission Control Protocol The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the main communications protocol, protocols of the Internet protocol suite. It originated in the initial network implementation in which it complemented the Internet Protocol (IP). Therefore, th ...

. *The

Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) is a series of conferences designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. It is the world's largest gathering of women and non-binary technologi ...

is first launched by Anita Borg. *Hi-Pitched Voices, a collaborative

women's writing project is launched in the Hypertext Hotel. *On 20 April,

Hu Qiheng Hu Qiheng (born 1934) is a Chinese computer scientist. Hu was the vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences from 1987 to 1996 and led the National Computing and Networking Facility of China, which connected China to the Internet in April ...

lead the project that installed the first

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...

connection to the Internet in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

1995

* Mary Lou Jepsen is the CTO of MicroDisplay where she developed smaller computer screens. * Eleanor K. Baum is the first woman to be elected president of the

American Society for Engineering Education American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, ...

1996

Xiaoyuan Tu Xiaoyuan Tu (born 1967) is a Chinese researcher and computer scientist specializing in machine learning, behavior modeling, physics modeling, biomechanical modeling, motion control interfaces, and intelligent virtual characters. She holds a Ph.D. ...

was the first female recipient of ACM's Doctoral Dissertation Award.

1997

, was the founding director of the Institute for Women and Technology (IWT), renamed Anita Borg Institute (ABI) in her honor in 2003. *Japanese-born Chieko Asakawa develops the IBM Home Page Reader opening up Web resources to the blind. *

Natalya Kaspersky Natalya Ivanovna Kasperskaya (; born 5 February 1966) is a Russian IT entrepreneur, President of the InfoWatch Group of companies and co-founder and former CEO of antivirus security software company Kaspersky Lab.

co-founds and heads the highly successful antivirus software company

Kaspersky Lab Kaspersky Lab (; ) is a Russian multinational cybersecurity and anti-virus provider headquartered in Moscow, Russia, and operated by a holding company in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1997 by Eugene Kaspersky, Natalya Kaspersky a ...

. * Manuela Veloso is awarded the CMU Allen Newell Medal for Excellence in Research.

1998

* The Center for Women and Information Technology (CWIT) is established at the

University of Maryland, Baltimore County The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) is a Public university, public research university in Catonsville, Maryland named after Baltimore County, Maryland, Baltimore County. It had a fall 2022 enrollment of 13,991 students, 61 un ...

(UMBC). *

Meg Whitman Margaret Cushing Whitman (born August 4, 1956) is an American business executive, diplomat, and politician. A member of the Republican Party, she ran for governor of California in the 2010 California gubernatorial election and lost to former Ca ...

becomes the CEO of

eBay eBay Inc. ( , often stylized as ebay) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that allows users to buy or view items via retail sales through online marketplaces and websites in 190 markets worldwide. ...

1999

LinuxChix LinuxChix is a women-oriented Linux community. It was formed to provide both technical and social support for women Linux users, although men are encouraged to contribute. Members of the community are referred to as "a Linux chick" (singular) and "L ...

, an international organization for women who use Linux and women and men who want to support women in computing, was founded by Deb Richardson. *

Marissa Mayer Marissa Ann Mayer (; born May 30, 1975) is an American business executive and investor who served as President (corporate title), president and chief executive officer of Yahoo! from 2012 to 2017, when it was sold to Verizon. She was a long-tim ...

, was the first female engineer hired at Google, and was later named vice president of Search Product and User Experience. She was formerly the CEO of

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

. *

coined the term, " middlebox". *

Carly Fiorina Cara Carleton "Carly" Fiorina (; ; born September 6, 1954) is an American businesswoman and politician, known primarily for her tenure as chief executive officer (CEO) of Hewlett-Packard (HP) from 1999 to 2005. Fiorina was the first woman to le ...

starts as the CEO of Hewlett-Packard. * Sun Yafeng starts as the chair of

Huawei Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ("Huawei" sometimes stylized as "HUAWEI"; ; zh, c=华为, p= ) is a Chinese multinational corporationtechnology company in Longgang, Shenzhen, Longgang, Shenzhen, Guangdong. Its main product lines include teleco ...

Technologies Board.

21st century

2000

Lydia Kavraki Lydia E. Kavraki () is a Greek- American computer scientist, the Noah Harding Professor of Computer Science, a professor of bioengineering, electrical and computer engineering, and mechanical engineering at Rice University. She is also the direc ...

is awarded the

Grace Murray Hopper Award The Grace Murray Hopper Award (named for computer pioneer RADM Grace Hopper) has been awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) since 1971. The award goes to a computer professional who makes a single, significant technical or serv ...

2001

* Noriko H. Arai started developing NetCommons which is used for content management at over 3,500 educational institutions.

2003

* Ellen Spertus earned a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 1998 with the notable thesis "ParaSite: Mining the structural information on the World-Wide Web". * Margaret Hamilton received the NASA Exceptional Space Act Award. * Sue Black starts her campaign to preserve

2004

Jeri Ellsworth Jeri Janet Ellsworth (born August 14, 1974) is an American entrepreneur, computer chip designer and inventor. She gained fame in 2004 for creating a complete Commodore 64 emulator system on a chip housed within a joystick, called Commodore 30- ...

is a self-taught computer chip designer and creator of the

C64 Direct-to-TV The C64 Direct-to-TV, called C64DTV for short, is a single-chip implementation of the Commodore 64 computer, contained in a joystick (modeled after the mid-1980s Competition Pro joystick), with 30 built-in games. The design is similar to the At ...

. * Lucy Sanders co-founded the

National Center for Women & Information Technology The National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that works to increase participation of girls and women in computing. NCWIT was founded in 2004 by Lucinda (Lucy) Sanders, Dr. Telle Whitney, a ...

Safra Catz Safra Ada Catz (; born December 1961) is an Israeli-American billionaire banker and technology executive. She is the CEO of Oracle Corporation. She has been an executive at Oracle since April 1999, and a board member since 2001. In April 2011, s ...

becomes the President of

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational computer technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Co-founded in 1977 in Santa Clara, California, by Larry Ellison, who remains executive chairman, Oracle was ...

2005

Audrey Tang Tang Feng ( zh, t=唐鳳, p=Táng Fèng; born 18 April 1981), also known by her English name Audrey, is a Taiwanese people, Taiwanese politician and free software programmer who served as the first Minister of Digital Affairs of Taiwan from Augu ...

founds and leads Pugs project, the first

Perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...

6 (now Raku)

–

interpreter Interpreting is translation from a spoken or signed language into another language, usually in real time to facilitate live communication. It is distinguished from the translation of a written text, which can be more deliberative and make use o ...

. * Mary Lou Jepsen is the founder and chief technology officer of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), and the founder of Pixel Qi. *

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

hires their first woman engineer, Ruchi Sanghvi. *

Xiaoyun Wang Wang Xiaoyun (; born 1966) is a Chinese cryptographer, mathematician, and computer scientist. She is a professor in the Department of Mathematics and System Science of Shandong University and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. ...

and her team crack the

SHA-1 In cryptography, SHA-1 (Secure Hash Algorithm 1) is a hash function which takes an input and produces a 160-bit (20-byte) hash value known as a message digest – typically rendered as 40 hexadecimal digits. It was designed by the United States ...

data security algorithm.

2006

Maria Klawe Maria Margaret Klawe ( ; born 1951) is a Canadian-American computer scientist and served as the fifth president of Harvey Mudd College from 2006 to 2023. Born in Toronto in 1951, she became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2009. She was previously ...

is the first woman to become president of the

Harvey Mudd College Harvey Mudd College (HMC) is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California, focused on science and engineering. It is part of the Claremont Colleges, which share adjoining campus grounds and resources. The college enrolled 902 undergra ...

since its founding in 1955 and was ACM president from 2002 until 2004. * Melanie Rieback's research concerns the security and privacy of Radio Frequency Identification (

RFID Radio-frequency identification (RFID) uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. An RFID system consists of a tiny radio transponder called a tag, a radio receiver, and a transmitter. When tri ...

) technology, she is known to have programmed the first virus to infect RFID devices. *

Joanna Rutkowska Joanna Rutkowska (born 1981 in Warsaw) is a Polish computer security researcher, primarily known for her research on low-level security and stealth malware, and as founder of the Qubes OS security-focused desktop operating system. Career She be ...

presented Blue Pill, a

rootkit A rootkit is a collection of computer software, typically malicious, designed to enable access to a computer or an area of its software that is not otherwise allowed (for example, to an unauthorized user) and often masks its existence or the exist ...

based on

x86 virtualization x86 virtualization is the use of hardware-assisted virtualization capabilities on an x86/x86-64 CPU. In the late 1990s x86 virtualization was achieved by complex software techniques, necessary to compensate for the processor's lack of hardware ...

, at the

Black Hat Briefings Black Hat Briefings (commonly referred to as Black Hat) is a computer security conference that provides security consulting, training, and briefings to hackers, corporations, and government agencies around the world. Black Hat brings together ...

computer security conference A computer security conference is a convention for individuals involved in computer security. They generally serve as meeting places for system and network administrators, hackers, and computer security experts. Common activities at hacker conven ...

. *In January, Janet Emerson Bashen, became the first African American woman to hold a patent for a software invention. * Frances "Fran" Allen becomes the first woman to earn an A.M. Turing Award. * Sophie Vandebroek becomes the Chief Technology Officer for

Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (, ) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox was the pioneer of the photocopier market, beginning with the introduc ...

. * Anne-Marie Kermarrec starts as the Research Director for L'Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique (

INRIA The National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria) () is a French national research institution focusing on computer science and applied mathematics. It was created under the name French Institute for Research in Comp ...

). * Yoelle Maarek opens the Google Haifa Engineering Center where she is the Director.

2007

* Meral Özsoyoğlu become the editor-in-chief of the ''ACM Transactions of Database Systems'' and is the first woman to hold that position.

2008

*Portuguese-born Carla Gomes founds and directs Cornell's Institute for Computational Sustainability. *

is the winner of the 2008 A.M. Turing Award. *The British Computer Society Information Retrieval Specialist Group (BCS IRSG) and the

(BCS) create an award in the name of computer scientist,

2009

is awarded an

IEEE Internet Award IEEE Internet Award is a Technical Field Award established by the IEEE in June 1999. The award is sponsored by Nokia Corporation. It may be presented annually to an individual or up to three recipients, for exceptional contributions to the ad ...

for her "contributions towards developing the Internet's architecture." *

joins

as CEO. * Maria Petrou starts as the director of the Informatics and Telematics Institute at Greece's Centre for Research and Technology (CERTH).

2010

* Farida Bedwei co-founds Logiciel in

Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...

2011

PyLadies PyLadies is an international mentorship group which focuses on helping more women become active participants in the Python (programming language), Python open-source community. It is part of the Python Software Foundation. It was started in Los A ...

, an international organization of women interested in coding

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (prog ...

, is started in

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

. *

becomes CEO of Hewlett-Packard. * Bettina Speckmann is the first winner of the Netherlands Prize for ICT Research where she was recognized for her work on geographic information systems. * Noriko H. Arai is the Program director for the artificial intelligence challenge: "Can a robot get into the University of Tokyo?" * Shikoh Gitau is awarded the Google Anita Borg Award, becoming the first person to earn a Google award in

Sub Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan Africa is the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lie south of the Sahara. These include Central Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the African countries and territ ...

2012

is a co-recipient of the A.M. Turing Award. *

Pixelles Pixelles, located in Montreal, is a non-profit grassroots organization devoted to increasing gender diversity in the video games, video game industry as a response to issues of sexism. History The debut of the Pixelles in Montreal coincided with ...

hosts their first game-programming incubator in

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

. *Computer scientist, Muffy Calder, starts as the Chief Scientific Advisor for the

Scottish Government The Scottish Government (, ) is the executive arm of the devolved government of Scotland. It was formed in 1999 as the Scottish Executive following the 1997 referendum on Scottish devolution, and is headquartered at St Andrew's House in ...

. * Ginni Rometty becomes the first woman to serve as president and CEO of IBM. * Eva Tardos earns the

. * Regina Honu founds Soronko Solutions, a software development company in 2012. * Carol Reiley is the first woman engineer to be featured on the cover of ''MAKE'' magazine. *Nigerian Women In Information Technology (NiWIIT) was created as an interest group of the Nigeria Computer Society to empower and encourage women working in the field of Information and Communication Technologies.

2013

*''

TIME Magazine ''Time'' (stylized in all caps as ''TIME'') is an American news magazine based in New York City. It was published weekly for nearly a century. Starting in March 2020, it transitioned to every other week. It was first published in New York Cit ...

'' names Afghani software developer, Roya Mahboob, one of the 100 most influential people of the year. * Christine Paulin-Mohring is awarded the

ACM Software System Award The ACM Software System Award is an annual award that honors people or an organization "for developing a software system that has had a lasting influence, reflected in contributions to concepts, in commercial acceptance, or both". It is awarded b ...

for her work on

Coq Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10 ), also known as ubiquinone, is a naturally occurring biochemical cofactor (coenzyme) and an antioxidant produced by the human body. It can also be obtained from dietary sources, such as meat, fish, seed oils, vegetables, ...

Proof Assistant System.

2014

Megan Smith Megan J. Smith (born October 21, 1964) is an American engineer and technologist. She was the third Chief Technology Officer of the United States (U.S. CTO) and Assistant to the President, serving under President Barack Obama. She was previously ...

named third (and first female) Chief technology officer of the

United States of America The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguo ...

( USCTO), succeeding

Todd Park Todd Park is an American entrepreneur and government official. He served as Chief Technology Officer of the United States and technology advisor for President of the United States, U.S. President Barack Obama. He is the co-founder and executive ...

. * Coraline Ada Ehmke drafts the first

code of conduct A code of conduct is a set of rules outlining the social norm, norms, rules, and responsibilities or proper practices of an individual party or an organization. Companies' codes of conduct A company code of conduct is a set of rules which is comm ...

for

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

projects, the Contributor Covenant. *Perianne Boring founded the trade organization and advocacy group Chamber of Digital Commerce in July. *In August, the first Pan-African Women in Tech conference took place online.

2015

Sarah Sharp Sage Sharp (formerly Sarah Sharp) is an American software engineer who has worked on the Linux kernel, including serving on the Linux Foundation's Technical Advisory Board for two years. Sharp is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns. Sharp be ...

is the first winner of the annual Women in Open Source Community Award, awarded by

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. (formerly Red Hat Software, Inc.) is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises and is a subsidiary of IBM. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North ...

. * Kesha Shah is the first winner of the annual Women in Open Source Academic Award, awarded by

. * Gillian Docherty becomes the new CEO of the DataLab in Scotland.

2016

becomes "digital minister" in Taiwan. *

Kate Devlin Kate Devlin, born Adela Katharine Devlin, is a Northern Irish computer scientist specialising in Artificial intelligence and Human–computer interaction (HCI). She is best known for her work on human sexuality and robotics and was co-chair of ...

co-organizes the first "sex-tech hackathon" in the UK. *

Maja Matarić Maja Matarić is an American computer scientist, roboticist and AI researcher, and the Chan Soon-Shiong Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, Neuroscience, and Pediatrics at the University of Southern California. She is known for her wo ...

co-founds Embodied Robotics. Regina_Honu_01

2017

* Michelle Simmons founds the first

quantum computer A quantum computer is a computer that exploits quantum mechanical phenomena. On small scales, physical matter exhibits properties of both particles and waves, and quantum computing takes advantage of this behavior using specialized hardware. ...

company in Australia. * Regina Honu opens Soronko Academy, the first coding and "human centered design school" for both children and teens in West Africa.

2018

* Dame Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight was appointed a Knight of the St. Sava Order of Diplomatic Pacifism for her work on

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

. * Gladys West, a human computer whose calculations helped develop GPS technology, is recognized for her work in December when she is inducted into the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame. * Safiya Umoja Noble publishes Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, arguing that search algorithms are racist and perpetuate societal problems. *-

Joy Buolamwini Joy Adowaa Buolamwini is a Canadian-American computer scientist and digital activist formerly based at the MIT Media Lab. She founded the Algorithmic Justice League (AJL), an organization that works to challenge bias in decision-making software ...

publishes Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification, exposing biases in

facial recognition Facial recognition or face recognition may refer to: *Face detection, often a step done before facial recognition *Face perception, the process by which the human brain understands and interprets the face *Pareidolia, which involves, in part, seein ...

systems.

References

Sources

* * * * * {{Timelines of computing

Women A woman is an adult female human. Before adulthood, a female child or adolescent is referred to as a girl. Typically, women are of the female sex and inherit a pair of X chromosomes, one from each parent, and women with functional u ...

computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, hardware and softw ...