This is a timeline of women in computing.
It covers the time when women worked as "human
computers" 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, 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.
The methods they developed have been used
by successive human computing teams.
== 19th century ==
=== 1842 ===
Ada Lovelace was an analyst of Charles Babbage's
analytical engine and is considered by many
the "first computer programmer."
=== 1849 ===
Maria Mitchell is hired by the U.S. Nautical
Almanac Office to work as a computer on tables
for the planet Venus.
=== 1875 ===
Anna Winlock joined the Harvard computers,
a group of women engaged in the production
of astronomical data at Harvard.
=== 1893 ===
Henrietta Swan Leavitt joined the Harvard
"computers", . She was instrumental in discovery
of the cepheid variable stars, which are evidence
for the expansion of the universe.
== 20th century ==
=== 1916 ===
Beatrice Cave-Brown-Cave went to work as a
human computer for the Ministry of Munitions.
=== 1918 ===
Women were hired to do ballistics calculations
as human computers in Washington, D.C.
The "chief computer" of the group was Elizabeth
Webb Wilson.
=== 1920 ===
Mary Clem leads the computing lab 
at Iowa State College.
=== 1921 ===
Edith Clarke files a patent for a graphical
calculator for problem solving electric power
line transmission problems.
=== 1926 ===
Grete Hermann 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
(NACA) which became NASA, 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 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 are her program
specification.
=== 1941 ===
Mavis Batey broke the Italian Naval code while
working at Bletchley Park.
The United States begins recruiting African-American
college graduates to work at Langley Air Force
Base as human computers.
=== 1942 ===
On August 11, Hedy Lamarr and co-inventor,
George Antheil, received their patent for
frequency hopping.
=== 1943 ===
Women worked as WREN Colossus operators during
WW2 at Bletchley Park.
Wives of scientists working on the Manhattan
Project with mathematical training were hired
as human computers to work on the ENIAC and
MANIAC I computers.
This included Klara Dan von Neumann, Augusta
H. Teller, and Adele Goldstine.
Gertrude Blanch led the Mathematical Tables
Project 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 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
ENIAC programmers.
=== 1946 ===
Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Frances Spence,
Kay McNulty, Marlyn Wescoff, and Ruth Lichterman
were the regularly working programmers of
the ENIAC.
Adele Goldstine, also involved in the programming,
wrote the program manual for the ENIAC.
=== 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 was working on similar
problems and discovered they were using a
prototype of a programmable Mark II computer.
=== 1948 ===
Kathleen Booth is credited with writing the
assembly language for the ARC2 computer.
Dorothy Vaughn becomes the first black supervisor
at NACA.
=== 1949 ===
Grace Hopper, was a United States Navy officer
and one of the first programmers of the Harvard
Mark I, known as the "Mother of COBOL".
She developed the first compiler 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 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 and Project Mercury space
programs, analyzing orbits and developing
computer procedures.
On May 6, 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.
Kathleen Booth creates Assembly Language.
=== 1951 ===
Frances Elizabeth "Betty" Snyder develops
a UNIVAC program, the first sort-merge generator.
=== 1952 ===
Mary Coombs 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 Klara Dan von Neumann pioneers
the programming of MANIAC I.
Canadian, Beatrice Worsley, completes her
doctorate in computer science, becoming the
first woman to earn that degree.
=== 1954 ===
Thelma Estrin works on Israel's first computer,
the WEIZAC.
=== 1955 ===
Annie Easley starts working as a human computer
for NACA.
Kateryna Yushchenko creates the Address programming
language.
=== 1958 ===
Orbital calculations for the United States'
Explorer 1 satellite were solved by the NASA
Jet Propulsion Laboratory's all-female "computers",
many of whom were recruited out of high school.
Mechanical calculators were supplemented with
logarithmic calculations performed by hand.
Grace Hopper designs the computer language,
FLOWMATIC.
May 5, Langley desegregates, closing down
the West Area Computers.
Kathleen Booth 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 COBOL.
=== 1961 ===
Dana Ulerys was the first female engineer
at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 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
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.
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.
=== 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 (LINC).
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 (AFIPS).
=== 1968 ===
Vera Molnár 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 late 1960s Director
of the Software Engineering Division of the
MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed
on-board flight software for the Apollo space
program.
MIT work prevented an abort of the Apollo
11 moon landing by using robust architecture[1].
Later, she was awarded the NASA Exceptional
Space Act Award for her scientific and technical
contributions.
Alexandra Illmer Forsythe is a co-author of
the first computer science textbook, Computer
Science: A First Course (Wiley & Sons).
=== 1970 ===
Drude Berntsen is appointed director of the
Norwegian Computing Center.
=== 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.
Adele Goldberg was one of developers of the
Smalltalk language.
Karen Spärck Jones 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 and her team defined a simple
text file format for Internet host names.
The list evolved into the Domain Name System
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.
Indian computer scientist Sudha Murthy is
hired as first woman to work for TELCO as
an engineer.
=== 1976 ===
Rózsa Péter publishes Recursive Functions
in Computer Theory, a topic she had been working
on since the 1950s.
=== 1978 ===
Sophie Wilson is a British computer scientist.
She is known for designing the Acorn Micro-Computer,
as well as the instruction set of the ARM
processor.
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 co-authored Introduction to VLSI
Systems, a bestselling very-large-scale integration
(VLSI) design textbook that triggered the
Mead & Conway revolution in integrated circuit
design.
Patricia Selinger was one of the key architects
of IBM System R, 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 was a game designer and programmer
for Atari Corp. and Activision.
Ruzena Bajcsy founds the General Robotics,
Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP)
lab at the University of Pennsylvania.
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 games Star Raiders and Warlords.
Gwen Bell starts the Computer Museum to preserve
artifacts of computer history.
Ruth M. Davis founds Pymatuning Group in Virginia.
=== 1982 ===
Lorinda Cherry worked on the Writer's Workbench
(wwb) for Bell Labs.
=== 1983 ===
Janese Swanson (with others) developed the
first of the Carmen Sandiego 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, particularly
the King's Quest series.
Susan Kare created the icons and many of the
interface elements for the original Apple
Macintosh in the 1980s, and was an original
employee of NeXT, 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 invented the Spanning Tree Protocol.
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 CIO.
Janet Walker develops the Symbolics Document
Examiner.
=== 1986 ===
Lixia Zhang was the only woman at the initial
meetings of the Internet Engineering Task
Force.
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 founds the electronic mailing list
for women in technology, Systers.
French computer scientist, Joëlle Coutaz
develops the Presentation-abstraction-control
model for human computer interactions.
=== 1988 ===
Éva Tardos, is the recipient of the Fulkerson
Prize for her research on design and analysis
of algorithms.
Janie Tsao co-founds Linksys.
=== 1989 ===
Frances E. Allen became the first female IBM
Fellow in 1989.
In 2006, she became the first female recipient
of the ACM's Turing Award.
Frances Brazier, professor of Computer Science
at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, is
one of the founder of NLnet, the first Internet
service provider 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 CEO and co-founder of Palm,
Inc., co-founder of Handspring, 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.
Carol Bartz becomes the CEO of Autodesk.
=== 1993 ===
Shafi Goldwasser a theoretical computer scientist,
is a two-time recipient of the Gödel Prize
for research on complexity theory, cryptography
and computational number theory, and the invention
of zero-knowledge proofs.
Barbara Liskov 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,
Quibbling.
=== 1994 ===
Sally Floyd, is known for her work on Transmission
Control Protocol.
The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
is first launched by Anita Borg.
Hi-Pitched Voices, a collaborative hypertext
women's writing project is launched in the
Hypertext Hotel.
On April 20, Hu Qiheng lead the project that
installed the first TCP/IP connection to the
Internet in China.
=== 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.
=== 1996 ===
Xiaoyuan Tu was the first female recipient
of ACM's Doctoral Dissertation Award.
=== 1997 ===
Anita Borg, 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 co-founds and heads the
highly successful antivirus software company
Kaspersky Lab.
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 (UMBC).
Meg Whitman becomes the CEO of eBay.
=== 1999 ===
LinuxChix, 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, 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!.
Lixia Zhang coined the term, "middlebox."
Carly Fiorina starts as the CEO of Hewlett-Packard.
Sun Yafeng starts as the chair of Huawei Technologies
Board.
== 21st century ==
=== 2000 ===
Lydia Kavraki is awarded the Grace Murray
Hopper Award.
=== 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
Bletchley Park.
=== 2004 ===
Jeri Ellsworth is a self-taught computer chip
designer and creator of the C64 Direct-to-TV.
Lucy Sanders co-founded the National Center
for Women & Information Technology
Sara Catz becomes the President of Oracle
Corporation.
=== 2005 ===
Audrey Tang is the initiator and leader of
the Pugs project.
Mary Lou Jepsen is the founder and chief technology
officer of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), and
the founder of Pixel Qi.
Facebook hires their first woman engineer,
Ruchi Sanghvi.
Xiaoyun Wang and her team crack the SHA-1
data security algorithm.
=== 2006 ===
Maria Klawe is the first woman to become president
of the Harvey Mudd College 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) technology, she is known to have programmed
the first virus to infect RFID devices.
Joanna Rutkowska presented Blue Pill, a rootkit
based on x86 virtualization, at the Black
Hat Briefings computer security conference.
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.
Anne-Marie Kermarrec starts as the Research
Director for L'Institut national de recherche
en informatique et en automatique (INRIA).
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.
Barbara Liskov is the winner of the 2008 A.M.
Turing Award.
The British Computer Society Information Retrieval
Specialist Group (BCS IRSG) and the British
Computer Society (BCS) create an award in
the name of computer scientist, Karen Spärck
Jones.
=== 2009 ===
Lixia Zhang is awarded an IEEE Internet Award
for her "contributions towards developing
the Internet's architecture."
Carol Bartz joins Yahoo! 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.
=== 2011 ===
Ladies Learning Code is launched in Toronto.
PyLadies, an international organization of
women interested in coding Python, is started
in Los Angeles.
Meg Whitman 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.
=== 2012 ===
Shafi Goldwasser is a co-recipient of the
A.M.
Turing Award.
Pixelles hosts their first game-programming
incubator in Montreal.
Computer scientist, Muffy Calder, starts as
the Chief Scientific Advisor for the Scottish
Government.
Ginni Rometty becomes the first woman to serve
as president and CEO of IBM.
Eva Tardos earns the Gödel Prize.
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.
=== 2013 ===
TIME Magazine names Afghani software developer,
Roya Mahboob, on of the 100 most influential
people of the year.
Christine Paulin-Mohring is awarded the ACM
Software System Award for her work on Coq
Proof Assistant System.
=== 2014 ===
Megan Smith named third (and first female)
Chief Technology Officer of the United States
of America (USCTO), succeeding Todd Park.
Coraline Ada Ehmke drafts the first code of
conduct for open source 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 is the first winner of the annual
Women in Open Source Community Award, awarded
by Red Hat.
Kesha Shah is the first winner of the annual
Women in Open Source Academic Award, awarded
by Red Hat.
Gillian Docherty becomes the new CEO of the
DataLab in Scotland.
=== 2016 ===
Audrey Tang becomes "digital minister" in
Taiwan.
Kate Devlin co-organizes the first "sex-tech
hackathon" in the UK.
Maja Matarić co-founds Embodied Robotics.
=== 2017 ===
Michelle Simmons founds the first quantum
computer 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.
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.
== See also ==
Women in computing
Timeline of women in science
