A tech remains an area where the female presence still has a lot to walk. Even so, the area has developed widely over the years thanks to key contributions originating directly from the minds of scientists, mathematicians and engineers.
In commemoration of the month of the Woman (March), the Less wires selected some women who made their contribution and who turned computing into what we know today.
- Augusta Ada Byron
Born in 1815, daughter of the famous British poet Lord Byron, Augusta Ada King, or Ada Lovelace, is considered the first programmer in history. As an adult, she collaborated with her husband, Charles Babbage, on the development of the first analytical calculus machine. It was responsible for the algorithm that could be used by the machine to calculate mathematical functions. Ada died in 1852, at 36 years of age, a victim of cancer of the cervix.
- Margaret Heafield Hamilton
Computer scientist, software engineer and businesswoman. She was director of the Software Division at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), who developed the flight program used in the Apollo 11 project, the first manned mission to the moon. And it was thanks to it that Neil Asmstrong and Buzz Aldrin were able to take a walk on the moon.
- The ENIAC programmers
Formed by: Kathleen McNulty, Mauchly Antonelli, Jean Jennings Bartik, Frances Synder Holber, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer, Frances Bilas Spence e Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum. They were selected to program the ENIAC. The aim was to create the first electronic and digital computer for World War II, the machine was widely used by the American armed forces in calculating missile trajectories.
ENIAC weighed more than 30 tons and occupied a room of more than 100 m². The responsibility of women was to manually determine the mathematical equations used for calculating the movement of projectiles.
- Grace Hopper
Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992), was an American naval officer and a leading systems analyst who actively contributed to computing as we know it today. She is responsible for the creation of the Flow-Matic programming language and has served as inspiration for the development of another language, COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) and is responsible for the terms bug and debug.
- Radia Joy Perlman
Known as the "mother of the internet," Radia is an American computer scientist responsible for the development of the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP). The protocol is an important part of the functioning of the connections that form an equipment network, a protocol widely used in network infrastructures (mainly in networks where Cisco equipment and technologies are used).
Radia currently works at Intel and has its name registered on dozens of patents from another major computer company.
The insertion of women in the technology area is still low. The motives vary from the prejudice of some men against the presence of women in the technological area, to cultural issues.
Are there any other prominent women who should be on this list? Suggest in the comments.
