Frances E. Allen was yesterday named the first ever woman recipient of the prestigious $100,000 Turing Award. In 1989, Allen was the first woman to be named an IBM Fellow. But she is not the only "i-Technology Heroine" - many inspired suggestions of others have been coming in recently, as a result of what one highly qualified commentator described as the "disgraceful" lack of women in my list of 150 All-Time Top i-Technology Heroes."You are continuing the 'Old BoysClub' of history," thundered Jean J. Bartik.
"I admire most of the men you have selected," she continued, "but couldn't you have looked a little harder to find the women who have made significant contributions?"
Bartik then went on to redress the balance, suggesting...
"Judy Clapp of Whirlwind,Thelma Estrin, an engineer who, with her husband, built the first computer outside the United States, Milly Koss who worked on the Univac under Grace Hopper, and Ethel Marsden who programmed the IBM SEAC machine built in 1950. These women pretty much made it by not asking permission but just doing. it. Act as if you have the job. Act as if you have permission."And it didn't end there. Before long Bartik was back to me:
"How about the ENIAC women: Jean Bartik, Fran Bilas Spence, Betty Holberton again, Kay McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, Marlyn Wescoff Melcher and Ruth Lichterman Teitlebaum?"Back to Fran Allen. The Turing Award is presented each year by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and includes a $100,000 prize. An IBM Fellow Emerita at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center, she was given the award for her contributions in the area of program optimization, a way of modifying a program to run more efficiently and improve performance.
IBM's site has an official account of her career:
"In the early 1950s, Allen received a degree in Education from Albany State Teacher's College - now known as the State University of New York at Albany. She then attended the University of Michigan, where she earned an MA in mathematics. Brochures, entitled "My Fair Ladies" were distributed to women on campus in a recruitment effort to entice women technologists to join IBM. When Allen was offered this opportunity, she took advantage of it in an effort to save money and pay off student loans. However, what she intended to be a temporary arrangement became a 45-year career at IBM Research.Allen has always believed that people deserve recognition for their outstanding accomplishments and contributions. Well now she has set an excellent example: already she has received the Grace Hopper's Celebration of Women in Computing Award, where she was honored as one of the most successful women in the computing field. And in 2002 she received the Ada Lovelace award for her "outstanding scientific and technical achievements and extraordinary service to the computing community through her accomplishments and contributions on behalf of women in computing."Allen has influenced IBM on a technical level, having spent the majority of her time working on compilers and large systems. Widely recognized for her fundamental work on the theory of program optimization and of leading PTRAN (Parallel Translations) project, she is regarded as a pioneer in the field of optimizing compilers, which she explains as 'translating the language a program is written in into language appropriate for the hardware...to best exploit the performance potential of that hardware.' Allen's personal contribution has been developing underlying algorithms that are effective across many types of hardware and in diverse situations."