Firstly, Ada Lovelace Day is celebrated on the second Tuesday of October every year and it commemorates Ada Lovelace an influential mathematician (and muse) which you will recognize as being what we now call a computer programmer. Her work with Lovelace, laid many of the foundations for computer science and makes her an icon to this day within women in technology. That said, Lovelace was not the first to leave this charismatic legacy of Ada.
These figures have come from a place that has many obstacles to overcome and time after time, these pioneering women are breaking down those barriers. Ada Lovelace Day: 7 more unsung women in techAs we mark Ada Lovelace Day, here are seven other trailblazing female technologists whose work continues to shape lives.
1. The Queen of Code: Grace Hopper
If there is any such thing as “Amazing Grace” in the computer programming world, that title would likely be bestowed on American Computer Scientist and Naval Rear Admiral Grace Hopper. Hopper is notable for creating the first compiler, a program that interprets written code into machine language. To the same end, this wonderful work led to the creation of COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language), one among few pioneer high-level programming languages that is still in practical use today.
The era that she worked in, With all this truly inspiring stuff,” Castles, “That blows my mind; Grace Hopper was a trailblazer. She was a tireless advocate for computing that could be used faster and easier. As one of her most memorable quotes “it is easier to apologize than I wanted permission.” which probably says a lot about how she thinks when approaching tech-problems, efficiently and uncompromisingly. Her memory is celebrated every year at the world’s largest celebration of women in tech: The Grace Hopper Celebration.
2. Hedy Lamarr: Actress
Hedy Lamarr Actress/Inventor The 1940s classic Hollywood star, Hedy Lamarr was a brilliant inventor. Together with George Antheil they developed a frequency hopping spread spectrum communication system to guide torpedoes launched through aircraft (patents filed June 1941) which lead them to be granted a patent on August 11, 1942. This technology was never used at war, but later it allowed to make a basis for the development of wireless communication protocols; Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
Although she has a storied legacy in invention, little of it was honored during her lifetime (she is now in the National Inventors Hall of Fame). Hedy Lamarr, Movie Star and Tech Pioneer: Her twin legacies stand as a testament that original thinking can come from the seemingly impossible.
3. Katherine Johnson: Woman Computer
Katherine Johnson was an African American mathematician who calculated the trajectory for every single one of NASA’s space missions. With respect to the flights as part of Project Mercury, her calculations proved critical in helping these become successful and ultimately aiding America’s efforts beating Russia in its own space race; especially for astronaut John Glenn, who orbited Earth successfully back before 1962. The book and movie “Hidden Figures” share part of that story — they were America’s black women human computers who calculated the space flight technology needed for manned flights.
She carefully calculated, though to her it was all-pioneering work that ultimately broke racial and gender boundaries in the typically unforgiving world of aerospace engineering. A Johnson legacy is the necessity of diverse perspectives in tech and all sciences.
4. Annie Easley: Rocket Scientist and Diversity Champion
In Annie Easley’s nearly 35-year career, she has worked on the Centaur rocket stage, supported numerous space launches and helped create computer programs to analyze energy-consumption data.
Faced deep into the history of NASA, Annie Easley was one important name. Easley was a computer scientist, mathematician and aerospace engineer who worked on the software for NASA’s Centaur rocket.
Her role in publishing major findings and policy determinations, which have very broad applications to the space program at its inception as well as for research into energy conservation later remains.
Just as Easley was a tireless champion for diversity in STEM. Over the course of her professional life, she sought to encourage and nurture future women (and minority) scientists in order ensure the doors she had helped open remained ajar.
5. Radia Perlman: The Mother of the Internet
The “mother of the internet” nickname is frequently given to Radia Perlman since she invented a protocol which was made up of a family spanning tree. This work resulted in the construction of a large network which had both high reliability as well as redundancy that later became known with many distributed technologies like we have today for what is commonly used on the internet.
Perlman has to offer more than Spanning Tree Protocol STP, She has contributed to the design of many other important protocols and her written work (textbooks, RFCs) have been definitive in computer networking. Perlman has made monumental contributions to the rise of residential broadband, yet she remains humble with a desire for technology to be more digestible and available.
6. The Woman Who Took Us To The Moon : Margaret Hamilton
Perhaps you know that Margaret Hamilton was the lead software engineer for Project Apollo and her work helped land humans on the Moon by 1969. Hamilton led the team that developed software for the Apollo Guidance Computer, responsible for guiding and landing the Lunar Module.
To realize this, Hamilton called the new discipline software engineering and he emphasized that proper engineering standards should be used in developing software. She received many awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work. The software engineering in Hamilton lives on the practices that are commonplace within the industry today.
7. The Macintosh Icons Designer : Susan Kare
Image credits: susan kareSusan Kare is an accomplished graphic artist who made significant contributions to the creation of Apple Macintosh computer. Kare created a large number of the first Macintosh icons, typefaces and user interface elements that helped make the computer usable and pretty. Her work on the Macintosh interface helped define how we use computers now.
Effective Design Using the visual perception of how people understand and interact with tech, Kare created a refreshing approach to design. Her work has earned her the nickname “the woman who gave Macintosh a smile.” Kare gives life to the fact that design is everything in technology, as usability counts as much as how tech-flexible it is.
Wrap-up: Paying Tribute to the Women Before Us
Ada Lovelace Day is not so much a celebration of one amazing woman but an acknowledgement that women have been there all along, and even in the past 150 years they made significant contributions to our new world. The sister stories of Grace Hopper, Heddy Lamarr, Katherine Johnson and Annie Easley as well as Radia Perlman, Margaret Hamilton and Susan Kare remind us that even in the traditional male cultures these women have always been at the cutting edge.
As we honor these pioneers, remember that tech still has a long way to go when it comes to representing the full complexity and diversity of our society. In this way, we will allow the women who come after us in tech to carry on that tradition and continue bending what is possible with technology into their future.
The day serves to remind us that the history of technology is full of women and their great contributions, while also guiding our minds towards doing what we can so this legacy does not go extinct and those in labs all over the world slump into depressing situations.
