This is a discussion topic for the original post at Women changing the world of technology - Botcity | Blog
How many women do you know in technology? Whether they are from the past or the present. In the previous article we talked about the first programmer, Ada Lovelace. And in this article, we will learn about other amazing women who helped to transform technology into what it is today.
Grace Hopper
She was the creator of the Flow-Matic programming language, used as the basis for the creation of another important language, COBOL. She was also one of the first programmers of the Mark I computer. She was an admiral and systems analyst for the United States Navy. Before that, she became a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University and was a mathematics professor at Vassar College. Some stories say that she was the person who invented the term “bug”.
Margaret Hamilton
Computer scientist, software engineer, and entrepreneur. She was the director of the Software Division at MIT’s Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed the flight program used in the Apollo 11 project, the first manned mission to the Moon. Hamilton’s software prevented the moon landing from being aborted.
Karen Jones
She was a computer scientist and was responsible for creating the concept of the inverse frequency of documents, a technology that underpins most modern search engines. She is mainly known for being a pioneer in computer science for jobs combining statistics and linguistics and an advocate for women in this field.
Dorothy Vaughan
She was an mathematician who worked at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the predecessor agency to NASA. In 1949, she was the first black woman to be promoted to the department head at NASA. She fought for the insertion of black women in all areas of research. She learned FORTRAN and taught other women, securing their jobs.
Women at ENIAC
They were 6: Betty Holberton, Marlyn Meltzer, Frances Spence, Kathleen Antonelli, Ruth Teitelbaum, and Adele Goldstine. They were responsible for configuring the ENIAC to perform various calculations. They also created protocols used to this day, the numeric keypad to facilitate programming, among other things.
Barbara Liskov
She is a computer scientist known for creating the Liskov Substitution Principle, for being the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in Computer Science in the United States, and for inventing the Abstract Data Type. She is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. She is the author of more than 140 scientific articles. She wrote two programming languages and software methodology and language design that led to object-oriented programming.
Mariéme Jamme
Born in Senegal and a technology activist. In 2016, she founded the iamtheCODE initiative and she is part of the board of the World Wide Web Foundation. She supports girls and young women globally and promotes the UN Sustainable Development Goals. One of the goals is 1 million girls and women programmers by 2030.
Coraline Ada Ehmke
Trans woman, software engineer. She is the creator of the Contributor Covenant for open source communities, the Hippocratic License that prohibits the use of open source for human rights violations, and the Organization for Ethical Source an organization that empowers open source developers. Always active in talks and actions about diversity, equality, and justice.
Nina Da Hora
Computer Scientist in PUCRio. Researcher in the area of Computational Thinking. Creator of the initiatives Computação da Hora and Ogunhê on education. A science communicator and Anti-racist Hacker.
Timnit Gebru
Computer scientist working on algorithmic bias, data mining, and ethics for artificial intelligence. Born in Ethiopia, she moved to the US under political asylum, graduated from Stanford, and worked for companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Google. Gebru develops studies and researches focused on the ethics of artificial intelligence.
Roberta Arcoverde
Computer Scientist graduated from UFPE and Director of Engineering at Stack Overflow in 2022 managing the team she was part of as a developer for almost 8 years. She is also a podcaster and has several participations in various podcasts about technology.
Want to meet more women? Visit this project on GitHub. Get inspired. Empower yourself. And share it with other women in the field, from those who are taking their first steps in technology to those who already have years of experience.