Important women in tech
Since the dawn of time, there have been female key figures that have shaped the world as we know it today. Let’s explore through some historical facts what women have accomplished in the tech industry.
Ada Lovelace (1815–1852)
All the way back in the 19th century, Ada Lovelace put her stamp on the computer industry. Back then, computers didn’t exist yet. However, English mathematician Babbage had made a proposal for a general purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. This machine was widely viewed as simply being a high performance calculator. Ada saw this differently and while translating a French paper on the machine to English, she added some of her own notes. These notes contained the first ever computer program, which could be used to calculate the famous Bernoulli numbers.
Her work was only recognized in the 20th century with the introduction of the first actual computer. Essentially, she predicted what computers a hundred years later would look like and even touched upon image processing, which has only been used widely in recent years. Out of respect, the computing community has named one of the earliest programming languages after her, Ada.
Katherine Johnson (1918–2020)
Have you watched the movie Hidden Figures? If not, I certainly recommend you do! It sketches the story of Katherine Johnson, a mathematician for NASA. The space agency noted her historical role as one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist.
During her 33-year career, she was essential for some important accomplishments by NASA, such as the first American in space or the first American in orbit. She was known as a human computer due to her computational abilities with little access technology and without the deserved recognition at the time.
Grace Hopper (1906–1992)
“It’s better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.”
That’s what Grace Hopper lived by. All of her life, she had been in the navy. With its rigid structure, it often took too long to ask for permission so rather than to wait, she took matters into her own hands. And the success she achieved is probably consequential to that. Grace has many accomplishments to her name, but the most important is probably her creating the first compiler, Flow-Matic, in 1957. For the average Joe among us, a compiler is a computer program that translates a programming language into machine code.
Following the creation of the first compiler, she helped develop COBOL, a programming language. COBOL is up until today still being used in financial and governmental organizations. I hope this proves how influential Grace has been to society. However, when asked in 1991 what her biggest achievement has been, she answered: “The answer would be all the young people I’ve trained over the years; that’s more important than writing the first compiler.”
Hedy Lamarr (1914–2000)
The fact that women can multi-task is a well-known fact, however, did you know that some people can excel in multiple fields. Hedy Lamarr is an example of that. With a super successful acting career in the 50’s and the career of an inventor, she balanced two completely opposite career fields in her life.
At the beginning of World War II she helped develop a radio guidance system for allied torpedoes. This ensured that the torpedoes could defeat the threat of jamming by their opponents. The principles of her work are nowadays still found in both Bluetooth and GPS technology.
These women are only a couple of examples that are well-known to society. However, many women work in tech on a daily basis and they deserve to be celebrated as well. That’s why at Academics For Technology, we organize our yearly Women in Tech event. Registrations are now open, so don’t miss out and register now on our website.
