computer engineering

Almost everyone has heard of “Amazing Grace” Hopper. She left her position as a university professor in math to join WAVES, which led her to write the first compiler. She also is the one who popularized the term “debugging”, after literally finding a bug in a computer. She developed the programming language COBOL. She envisioned a future where everyone could easily use computers, and we have her to thank for many of the advances that led to modern computing. Today, however, I’d like to introduce another mathematician turned computer scientist who hasn’t received as much attention as Hopper: Frances Allen.  Allen was the first woman to become an IBM Fellow and to receive the Turing award. She is also a fellow of the IEEE and the Association for Computing Machinery. She originally intended to teach after earning a master’s degree in mathematics, but decided to work at IBM until she had […]