The tech industry has always been a predominantly male field. Only 18% of all computer science bachelor’s degrees in the United States are earned by women. There are a wide variety of factors theorized to be behind the lack of females working in tech. One theory is that computers have always been marketed towards males, which may play a part in the gender gap. Another theory is that society’s portrayal of the stereotypical programmer is a geeky male with poor social skills, which may be another factor involved with why such a low percentage of women work in the field.
Despite the fact that so few women graduate in computer science compared to men, so women have challenged the stereotype and proved to be some of the greatest programmers the world has ever known. Here we will take a look at 10 of the most famous female programmers.
10 Famous Female Programmers
- Ada Lovelace
- Grace Hopper
- Parisa Tabriz
- Edith Clarke
- Carol Shaw
- Rebecca Heineman
- Janese Swanson
- Radia Perlman
- Dona Bailey
- Evelyn Boyd Granville
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Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace was a female mathematician and writer living in England in the 1800’s. She is regarded by many as an early pioneer of programming due to her work on Charles Babbage’s analytical engine. The analytical engine was a proposed mechanical general purpose computer that enabled the mechanization of mathematical operations. It is considered a major contribution towards computer evolution and Ada Lovelace contribute greatly to its development.
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Grace Hopper
Any COBOL fans here? Grace Hopper was a computer scientist born in New York in 1906. She invented the first compiler for a programming language and her ideas of a machine independent programming language created the way for the development of the COBOL language, the first high level programming language. She was also in the Navy and worked on the Harvard Mark I computer programming staff.
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Parisa Tabriz
Parisa Tabris is the Direct of Engineering for Google. She was born in 1983 in Chicago, Illinois. She began studying engineering in college but became interested in computer science instead. She developed a passion for cyber security after her own website was hacked. At this point in her career she is a computer security expert.
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Edith Clarke
Edith Clarke was the world’s first female electrical engineer. She was born in Maryland in 1883. At the age of 12 she was orphaned and raised by her older sister. She used her inheritance to study mathematics and later went on to be the first woman to earn a masters in electrical engineering from MIT. She was the inventor of the Clarke calculator, a graphical device that solved equations involving electrical currents and voltage. The device used hyperbolic functions and solved equations ten times faster than earlier methods.
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Carol Shaw
Carol Shaw is one of the first female programmers to work in the video game industry. She was born in 1955 in California. She studied computer science in college and was hired by Atarri, Inc in 1978 to work on video games. She went on to work on a variety of games for the Atari 2600 and retired in 1990. She received an Industry Icon Award in 2017 for her work.
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Rebecca Heineman
Rebecca Heineman was a founding member of multiple video game companies which include: Interplay Companies, Contraband Entertainment, Logicware, and Olde Skuul. She is currently the CEO of Olde Skull. She was born in California in 1963 where she grew up too poor to purchase any new games for her Atari 2600. She taught herself how to copy games, and soon started reverse-engineering the console’s code to learn how the games worked. She got her first programming job at the age of 16. Her storied career has had her involved with many classic games such as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Baldur’s Gate III, Medal of Honor, and more.
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Janese Swanson
Janese Swanson is a software developer and inventory responsible for the company Girl Tech. She also co-developed the cult classic Carmen Sandiego games. She was born in 1958 and attended high school in California. She got her first degree in liberal arts, but went on to continue her studies and acquire seven more degrees which included a doctorate. She was eventually hired as a product manager for a software company where she worked for many years. Eventually she decided she wanted to create technology for women and she launched Girl Tech a company that made toys for girls.
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Radia Perlman
Radia Perlman is a computer programmer and network engineer that was born in 1951 in Virginia. She is famed for inventing the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) which is fundamental for network bridges. Her invention is vital for the operation of the internet. She went to MIT where she earned her B.S. and M.S. degrees in mathematics. She went on to earn her Ph.D in computer science in 1988. She currently works for the multinational corporation Dell EMC.
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Dona Bailey
Dona Bailey is most famously known as the co-creator of the classic arcade game Centipede which launched in 1981. She got her programming start when she was hired by General Motors where she worked on displays and microprocessor based cruise control systems. She soon became interested in arcade games and joined Atari in 1980 where she was the only woman in the coin-op division.
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Evelyn Boyd Granville
Evelyn Boyd Granville was a pioneer in computing. She was also the second African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics from an American University. She was born in 1924 in Washington, D.C. She majored in mathematics and physics as an undergrad, and was later on accepted to Yale for their mathematics program where she earned her doctorate. After college she began a teaching career but was eventually hired by IBM as a computer programmer. She then joined the U.S. Space Technology Laboratories where she worked on various projects such as the Apollo program.
Closing Thoughts
In conclusion, though computer science is a male dominated field, many women have challenged this stereotype and has proved to be some of the best programmers of their generation. Many of the modern technologies and inventions that we use today have been made possible by the contributions of a few great women. Women can thrive in any field, and the contributions of the 10 famous women programmers we covered here proves it.